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GERMANY'S MADNESS 



GERMANY'S MADNESS 



BY 

EMIL REICH 

(doctor juris) 
Author of "General History," *' Foundations of Modern 
Europe," "Atlas Antiquus," "Atlas of English 
History," "Select Documents," "Suc- 
cess Among Nations," etc. 



NEW YORK 

DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY 

1914 






Copyright, 1914 

Bt ANDREW MELROSE 

Under title "Germany's Swelled Head* 



//£' 



VAIL-BALLOU COMPANY 
BINQHAMTON AND NEW YORK 



OCT 28 1914 

'CI.A388.I24 



PREFACE 

The late Dr. Emil Eeich, author of the trench- 
ant volume here reprinted, was a Hungarian 
born, and was educated at the Universities of 
Prague, Budapest and Vienna, where he had 
ample opportunity to study the German Em- 
pire and interpret its thought and aspirations 
from a close and critical standpoint. Latterly 
he lived for many years in England, and came 
to identify himself entirely with Britain's wel- 
fare and interests, but he was able to claim, in 
a short preface, that his book was ** based on 
a full and sympathetic study of German history 
and literature, both in the past and in the pres- 
ent/' 

The motive which inspired the author to put 
pen to paper in 1907 derived from an appre- 
hension, only too well founded, that the British 
nation was by no means fully awake to the na- 
ture of German aspirations, although these 
were, in his opinion, fraught with menace to 
the peace and well-being of the British Empire. 
To-day, Germany, running amok in Europe, has 
justified his prognosis to the utmost, and Brit- 
ain has been forced to face the * * supreme strug- 
gle" which he foresaw. 



vi PREFACE 

Dr. Eeich's startling exposure of the Kaiser 
and the governing classes of Germany did not 
immediately achieve its object. Indeed, the 
book passed almost unnoticed, for in 1907 the 
average Englishman still refused to believe 
that the Kaiser and his subjects were inspired 
by bitter enmity to the British Empire. Then, 
too, Dr. Reich's plea for the creation of a huge 
standing army was calculated to prejudice him 
in the eyes of the large mass of people whose 
tradition is that the nation is secure while it 
maintains command of the sea, and that the 
burden of naval expenditure is heavy enough 
in its drain upon the public purse, without the 
addition of tremendous sums to the annual army 
estimates. Add to this the fact that the book 
was published by a provincial printer, and it 
is possible to account for the neglect which was 
the portion of the first edition. 

Although the book missed the public for whom 
it was intended, it made an impression on a 
few discerning minds. That astute watcher of 
European politics, the late King Edward, read 
it and was so much impressed that he recom- 
mended it to a distinguished soldier, as will be 
seen from the striking letter of the Bishop of 
Durham which appeared in the Times of Au- 



PREFACE vii 

gust 17. We quote the opening paragraph: — 

^^ About seven years ago, I was a fellow 
guest at Trinity Lodge, Cambridge, with a 
distinguished soldier, who showed me, be- 
fore we parted, a book to which his own 
attention had been called by King Edward. 
It was Germany ^s Stvelled Head, by Dr. 
Emil Reich.'' 

No doubt the distinguished soldier was duly 
impressed, and no doubt he passed the book 
on to other distinguished men in both services. 
Probably it is not straining the point to sug- 
gest that the state of preparedness in which 
Germany found us at the opening of the war 
may have been not a little due to the valuable 
information concerning her intentions given by 
Dr. Reich. 

In order to bring Dr. Reich's work up to 
date, there has been added an epilogue, by an- 
other hand. This, it is believed, will make it 
clear that the omens which were already above 
the horizon in 1907 have, in the interval, been 
reinforced by sundry dicta and data since ob- 
served by those who have kept an eye upon 
European politics and on the things that were 
being written, said and done in Germany. 



viii PREFACE 

In revising the text of Dr. Reich's original 
work, an attempt has been made to eliminate 
some of the matter that is irrelevant to the 
present issue ; but it has been thought unneces- 
sary to correct or qualify the author's state- 
ments as to the naval and commercial situation 
in the summer of 1907. These have still a cer- 
tain historical significance, and in themselves 
form part of the case upon which Dr. Reich 
based his exposure of the Kaiser's dreams and 
the seeming apathy of the advisers of the Brit- 
ish Grovernment. There has been steady de- 
velopment in the British naval policy since 
1907, and none could rejoice more than would 
Dr. Reich, were he still alive, in the fact that 
war, sudden war, has found the British navy 
fit and ready. 

If it were necessary to justify the republica- 
tion of Dr. Reich's masterly summary of Ger- 
man pretensions, sufficient reason would surely 
be found in the immediate desirability of mak- 
ing absolutely clear to the ordinary citizen the 
nature and objective of the Kaiser's policy, 
and the swelled-headedness of the German peo- 
ple which has made possible the present insane 
campaign. 

August, 1914 



CONTENTS 

PART I 

Summary of the whole book, p. 1. The Kaiser — his real 
personality, 1-5. Potentially he is where Napoleon was in 
1807, 7. Some utterances of the Kaiser, 10, 11. What he 
means by "German people," 11. H. S. Chamberlain's work 
{Foundations, etc.) and its enormous success in Germany, He 
and his school "prove" that ell the great men of the past 
were Germans, 13-16; so was Jesus, 16, 17; and others, 17-23. 
Vast influence of this crazy idea, 24. Quotations from Wolt- 
mann's book proving all the great Italians of the Renascence, 
and the French, to have been of German origin, 24-37. How 
all this has created the swelled-head of the Germans, 37-38. 
The ignorance of Britons about Germany, 39. The Germans 
are upstarts, and hence intolerably conceited, 40-47. There is 
a "German Religion," 47. Quotations to show what the Ger- 
mans are taught to think of themselves; and of the "evident" 
vocation of Germany, 47-67 ; judgments of French and Rus- 
sian writers on Germany's swelled head, 67-69. 

PART II 

How Austria-Hungary, in her present position, contributes 
to the swelling of Germany's head, 72-81; and Russia, 81-82. 
Result: There are now only two Great Powers in Europe, 
Great Britain and Germany, 82. The German Navy and its 
constant and rapid growth, 83-101. German plans in Persia, 
101-106. German prosperity, 106-109. To understand Ger- 
man Imperialism one must understand the real driving causes 
of British Imperialism, 109-113. Why Germans hate emi- 
gration, 113-118. Nor do they mean to abstain from having 

ix 



X CONTENTS 

children; connection between Imperialism and Malthusianism, 
119-123. From all this follows one thing, and one alone: 
German expansion by war with England, 124-129. The folly 
of thinking that the Germans build their fleet for "defensive 
purposes" only, 129-131. Discussion of the facts apparently 
in favour of the opinion that the Germans perhaps do not 
mean to be aggressive, 131-144. Fallacy of the "two power 
standard," and discussion of the necessity of having the right 
spirit, i.e., the real guarantee of victory, 145-150. Features 
giving German Imperialism a strong leverage, such as no na- 
tion in modern times has had, 154-158. Weak features of 
the Germans, 15S-173. 

PART III 

The argument in conclusion: Germany is driven towards 
expansion, and such expansion can only take place at the ex- 
pense of the British Empire: a struggle is inevitable, 174-189. 

EPILOGUE 

An Imperial Machiavelli, 190-193. A bid for Mahometan 
support, 194-196. Russia flouted, 197-199. The Coup d'Ag- 
adir, 199. Balkan trouble and German policy, 200-201. The 
Germans versus the World, 201-206. The ethics and opinions 
of William II., 206-209. The influence of Bismarck, 209-212. 
Prussian Atheism, 212-214. Germans and Militarism, 214- 
223. In Conclusion, 223-224. 



GERMANY'S MADNESS 



PART I 

The Germans are afflicted with the severest 
attack of swelled-headedness known to modern 
history. 

The British are practically ignorant of this 
dangerous state of mind in their greatest rivals. 

These two statements are the burden of this 
book. The first of them can be made out as one 
can prove a mathematical truth. Of the cor- 
rectness of the second statement, that is, of the 
fact that the British, as a nation, are amazingly 
ignorant of the state of the German mind, the 
author has convinced himself in the course of 
very numerous lectures and conversations en- 
abling him to learn the views of thousands and 
thousands of Britons of all classes, both men 
and women. 

What, for instance, can be more astounding 
than the opinions commonly held in this coun- 
try with regard to the Kaiser? To most Eng- 
lishmen he is a kind of ^* impulsive young man'* ; 
a sort of reckless after-dinner talker, hasty 

telegraphist, jack-of-all-trades, and ^^commer- 

1 



2 GERMANY'S MADNESS 

cial traveller of the Germanic firm. ' ' When, in 
a public lecture, one speaks of him as ** William 
the Greatest,'' the whole audience bursts into 
self-complacent laughter. Say at a lecture, that 
*^the mailed fist is looming large and has to be 
nipped in the bud," and you pass for the man 
who has said a great political truth in a witty 
manner. 

THE EEAL KAISER 

Yet there is not a grain of real judgment in 
all this. It is only another form of shaking 
hands with oneself, of patting oneself on one's 
back. Strange to say, this rather awkward way 
of stroking one's back is the most pleasing of 
distractions to most people talking European 
politics. The Kaiser is nothing less than the 
very reverse of what most Englishmen imagine 
him to be. He is, to begin with, a man of ripe, 
sober, and substantial judgment. On all the 
outstanding questions of European policy he 
is undoubtedly the best informed individual in 
existence. He knows all the great States and 
Nations of Europe from personal contact with 
them; he speaks their languages, and knows 
their history intimately; he is constantly kept 
up to the mark; and, to give just one instance, 



GERMANY'S MADNESS 3 

twelve experienced men of his Cabinet never 
stop paying the minutest attention to all mili- 
tary movements and military resources of the 
British, all the world over. The French Pres- 
ident, or his leading ministers; the Emperor- 
King of Austria-Hungary ; or the King of Italy, 
let alone the Czar of Russia, cannot, in point 
of real information on European politics, be- 
gin to compare with the Kaiser. 

Now, knowledge of this kind is power. Not 
all knowledge is power. There is theoretic 
knowledge; there is newspaper knowledge; 
there is schoolroom wisdom; and there is the 
Desert of Sahara called the knowledge of the 
official mind. But the information possessed 
by the Kaiser on international politics is true 
and very valuable knowledge. It is in the light 
of this knowledge of his that we must view all 
his apparently rash and impulsive acts. He 
wires readily; he evidently likes it. But this 
must not induce any one to the belief that he 
wires first and thinks it out afterwards. His 
famous wire to President Kriiger was, as we 
now know, a carefully-thought-out lightning. 
He wanted to embroil England in South Africa, 
so as to win time for his naval preparations. 
Prussian policy always has been what soldiers 



4 GERMANY'S MADNESS 

call ricochet shooting : one aims at A, but shoots 
atB. 

The Kaiser clearly and definitely knows what 
he is about. In France, the statesmen are crip- 
pled by the false position of a defeated nation, 
chafing unspeakably under her defeat, not yet 
able to wash out the blot ; in Austria-Hungary, 
the unending conflicts of the various nationali- 
ties paralyse all consistent and great states- 
manship; in Italy, the Pontiff saps the King; 
Eussia is too busy at home to think of Europe. 
In Germany alone, of all Continental great 
Powers, is there a European policy clearly 
grasped and energetically carried out. In Ger- 
many alone, of all Continental countries, is 
there a ruler, young, strong, well-informed, and 
pursuing a definite, well-founded, and well- 
organised international policy. To speak of 
such a ruler as most Britons do, is nothing short 
of absurd ; absurd, from the British standpoint, 
we submit. The point is not to bandy jokes at 
this or that failing of good taste in the Kaiser ; 
the point is to know what he is after, and if he 
can realise his plans. The point is to see his 
real proportions ; to do, by him, what most peo- 
ple do with themselves : to take him seriously. 

Eeally, the chief reason why so many people 



GERMANY'S MADNESS 5 

fail to appreciate the Kaiser aright, is his con- 
stant making of speeches. Britons dislike 
words; more especially spoken words. The, 
man who talks much is here in this country not 
held to he a man of power. His words, his 
speeches discredit him. However that may be 
in Great Britain, on the Continent people con- 
stantly talk. Although the average Briton may 
deem it almost incredible, it is a fact that peo- 
ple on the Continent have long conversations. 
They do listen to good speeches with deference ; 
and men in power are expected to deliver fine 
speeches. The Kaiser is a born orator. He 
speaks naturally very well, and even the style 
of his addresses, delivered on the spur of the 
moment, is quite remarkable. Whether he de- 
livers a sermon on board ship, as he has fre- 
quently done ; or whether he addresses students 
at Bonn University, a regiment, labourers, 
scientific congresses, or diplomatists ; he invari- 
ably succeeds in giving point and life and fine 
shape to his ideas. On the Continent this is a 
serious power. To underrate it, to judge it 
from the British standpoint, is not only absurd, 
but also quite beyond the point. A man who 
can talk as well as the Kaiser would be a prom- 
inent man in Germany under all conditions ; but 



6 GERMANY'S MADNESS 

that such great oratory should be the gift of a 
person who happens to be the German Emperor, 
that is a fact of far-reaching importance with 
a nation with whom Authority and high-class 
oratory have an enormous influence. 

THE KEYNOTE OF HIS POLICY 

We shall soon see what constitutes the evident 
and only aim of the Kaiser. His well-known 
utterance, to the effect that the future of the 
Germans lies on the water, is the keynote of all 
his policy. The past of the Germans evidently 
^'lay on beer,'' to imitate the Kaiser's phrase- 
ology ; the future, bowing to modern teetotalism, 
lies on water. How many good or poor jokes 
can be made on that utterance! How many 
have been made! Yet, the point of all points 
is to find out whether in that teetotalising of 
German policy, the Kaiser has or has not struck 
the true keynote on which his nation will act. 
We unhesitatingly say, he has struck it. There 
is no other keynote to the future of Germany. 

Under these conditions, the words and acts 
of the Kaiser must be taken very seriously in- 
deed. His personal intervention in nearly all 
important questions of European politics in- 
dicates a master will and an intellect fully con- 



GERMANY'S MADNESS 7 

scious of Germany's vast possibilities. English 
papers have talked of his diplomatic raid on 
Morocco as of a Lohengrin venture. But the 
Kaiser's ship carrying him to the coast of the 
Shereefian Empire was not a swan, and he is 
no Lohengrin. In fact, the shortest considera- 
tion of the facts of the present international 
policy in Europe will show to any one not 
fatally blinded by prejudice or conceit, that the 
Kaiser is potentially where Napoleon the Great 
was, exactly one hundred years ago. In 1807, 
in summer, Napoleon was at the height of his 
power. He had, in open battle, as well as in the 
council-room, beaten all the Great Powers of 
the Continent. All the German rulers, and 
first of all, the ^' Roman Emperor of the Ger- 
manic Empire," or the Austrian ruler, were 
utterly defeated by him. So were the Princes 
and Republics of Italy; and last, not least, the 
King of Prussia and the Czar of Russia, whom 
Napoleon had worsted both at Austerlitz (1805) 
and Friedland (1807). On the Continent, then, 
there was, in 1807, no Power that could se- 
riously think of thwarting Napoleon, whether 
alone or allied with one or two other Powers. 

Such was the state of the Continent exactly 
one hundred years ago. We here submit, that 



8 GERMANY'S MADNESS 

potentially, at any rate, the state of the Con- 
tinent is at present (1907) quite the same sort 
of a '^one man's show,'' as it was in 1807. 

The Germans themselves look upon France 
as a nation that has practically given up the 
political game altogether. The French, says 
one of Germany's most popular and influential 
thinkers, are evidently retiring into an idyllic 
life, and have abandoned all hopes of playing 
a great role in the councils of Europe (Eduard 
von Hartmann). In other and more recent ar- 
ticles, the French are styled by the Germans, 
*'the bankers of Europe." Thus does Ger- 
many construe the silence of France during 
these thirty-six years. 

Austria-Hungary, and Russia, both of them 
beaten States, are seriously troubled by in- 
ternal dissensions, and the Germans are prac- 
tically free from the danger of being suddenly 
attacked by one or two of their Continental 
neighbours; just as was Napoleon in 1807. 
They have signally defeated both Austria and 
France, their most dangerous neighbours. As 
to Russia, Germany has had no war with a Czar 
since 1762; and there is, at present, no reason 
to think that Russia will attack Germany. 

From this it follows with irrefutable cer- 



GERMANY ^S MADNESS 9 

tainty, that Germany in 1907 is in a position 
even stronger than that of Napoleon in 1808. 
For, Napoleon had in that year commenced his 
unending and most troublesome wars with the 
Spanish; and, although his Generals defeated 
the Spanish armies time after time, he could 
not secure the peaceful possession of the Penin- 
sula. Nor was he safe with Austria. In 1809 
he had to wage a new and very complicated 
campaign against Austria ; and when in 1812 he 
invaded Eussia, his Spanish wars were still 
going on, all over Spain and Portugal. Now, 
the Germans see themselves at present in a far 
more favourable condition. They have little 
to fear from France, Spain, Austria, or Italy. 
Their hands are free. The Kaiser can, without 
fear of unexpected surprises, concentrate his 
forces upon England or Russia, or any other 
objective. No other monarch on the Continent 
can claim a similar position of absolute free- 
dom of action. 

Can it, under these circumstances, astound 
any one that the Kaiser has a full consciousness 
of his unprecedented possibilities! In speeches 
without number he has given expression to his 
pride and strength and aggressiveness. In a 
speech delivered at the completion of a fort on 



10 GERMANY'S MADNESS 

the Western frontier of Germany, he said : * ' I 
christen thee Fort Haeseler. Thou wilt be 
called upon to defend the conquests of Germany 
upon her Western foes.'' (March 1, 1900.) On 
another occasion he said: — 

^'I have no fear for the future, I am con- 
vinced that my plan will succeed. I have 
within me the indomitable purpose to walk with 
a firm step, in despite of every resistance, in 
the path that I have once recognised to be the 
right one." 

*^If one wishes to settle something in this 
world, the pen is only powerful so long as it is 
backed by the power of the sword. ' ' 

Again, when laying the foundation stone of 
the Eoyal Museum at Saalburg (October 4, 
1900) after consecrating the building to the fu- 
ture of the German Fatherland: — 

^^May it in times to come, by the unified co- 
operation of princes and peoples, of their 
armies and their citizens, become as powerful, 
and as firmly united, as wonderful as the uni- 
versal Roman Empire, so that one day it may 
be possible to say, as formerly, "Civis Ro- 
manus sum/' i. e., **I am a German citizen J' 

On October 28, 1900, when celebrating 
Moltke 's birthday, he emitted a wish that, * ^ the 



GERMANY'S MADNESS 11 

Staff might lead Germany on to further vic- 
tories/' and again: ^^My utmost wish is to re- 
move whatever divides the great German peo- 
ple." 

THE PAN-GERMAN IDEA 

For the full understanding of these latter 
words, the non-German reader must be warned 
not to take the term ^^ German people" lightly. 
By ^'German," the Germans understand at 
present practically all the nations worth talking 
about. ^ ^ German ' ' no longer means the people 
between the Ehine and the Vistula ; that is, the 
nation that talks German, drinks beer, and 
makes music in the streets, in beer-gardens, and 
in concert-halls; the nation of ^' poets and 
thinkers ' ' as the elder Lord Lytton used to call 
them. By ^'German" is now understood the 
vast ocean of peoples who talk a Teutonic lan- 
guage, and who, if they do not talk a Teutonic 
idiom, ought in common decency to talk one. 
The Swedes, Norwegians, Danes, Dutch; the 
English, the Belgians, the Swiss ; the Austrians, 
the Russian Kurlanders, Lithuanians; the nu- 
merous tribes in Hungary talking German dia- 
lects ; all these people are, so runs the gospel of 
modern German scholars, really Germans. 



12 GERMANY'S MADNESS 

Lest the reader should believe that the con- 
temporary Germans are so modest as to claim 
only Sweden, Norway, Holland, Belgium, 
Switzerland, Hungary, Western Russia, and the 
little islands called British, the author hastens 
to add that the most influential writers in the 
Fatherland teach the Germans the following 
amusing lesson: The Slavs too, that is, the 
Russians, Poles, Bohemians, Servians, Croa- 
tians, etc., are, originally, all Germans. 

Perhaps the reader would like to see a quota- 
tion or two about this remarkable discovery. 
While most of us have, thanks to the wisdom of 
Parliament, accustomed ourselves to learn that 
most material things have been ^'made in Ger- 
many''; many people are still innocently believ- 
ing, that some nations, at any rate, were not 
made in the Fatherland. The error is pro- 
found. All the great nations are, we now hear 
from hundreds of University chairs, from thou- 
sands of journalistic pulpits, really German, 
and ought therefore to be submerged in One 
Universal Germany. 

Amongst the various ^^world-famous" men 
trumpeting about this doctrine of Pan-German- 
ism, or Alldeutschland; that is, that all historic 
nations, in order to reach their final bliss, must 






GERMANY'S MADNESS 13 

and will be minced up into the Great German 
Universal Sausage. This doctrine, dished up 
to the German nation by some of their most 
serious writers and scholars of Berlin, Munich, 
Strassburg, or Leipsic, is taught, more particu- 
larly by a man who, by the irony of fate, goes 
by the name of Chamberlain ; Houston Stewart 
Chamberlain. The book in which he advances 
his startling propositions is entitled The Foun- 
dations of the XlXth Century, and it has had 
a most marvellous success with the Germans. 
Although heavy, both in bulk and price, it sold 
in many, many thousands of copies, and is, by 
the majority of the Germans, considered to be 
a higher revelation of truth unfathomable. 
Eich men have bought up thousands of copies 
of this grostesque and absurd work, distribut- 
ing them, free of charge, to hundreds of Public 
Libraries. The Kaiser publicly and warmly 
approved of it. It has given rise to quite a 
literature on, for, or against it; and Chamber- 
lain is now one of the most popular and influ- 
ential writers in Germany. 

The secret of Chamberlain's very great suc- 
cess in Germany is not far to seek. With an 
air of scientific argument he proves to his own, 
and to German satisfaction, that all history 



14 GERMANY'S MADNESS 

spells ^'German,'' and that all future develop- 
ments of the world will be *^Made in Germany.'' 
The Germans are indeed, Chamberlain teaches, 
the elect people. It is mere frivolity to think 
that the Jews are the elect ones. By no means ; 
the Germans are the ones, the unique, the only, 
the overmen, the chosen people. (That is prob- 
ably the principal reason why they so hate the 
Jews. It is professional envy. Clearly, the 
Germans, not the Hebrews, are the Jews, the 
chosen people.) It is none of their fault. 
Many of them, being of a modest turn, regret 
being so immensely superior to other tribes. 
But they cannot help it. It is in them ; Nature 
has been so kind to them. They lift their arms ; 
and all resistance vanishes into the fourth di- 
mension. They look at any thing, event, or 
riddle, and, piercing it through and through 
with the darts of their unfailing intellect, they 
solve, explain, or reconstruct it. Their stom- 
ach is strong; they can and will absorb all the 
mountains, meadows, rivers, seas ; and their di- 
gestion will not suffer in the least. 

This, then, is the gospel according to Mr. 
Houston Stewart Chamberlain. He says: — 

**By Germans, I mean the various popula- 
tions of Northern Europe who appear in his- 



GERMANY'S MADNESS 15 

tory as Kelts, Germans, Slavs, and from whom, 
mostly in inextricable confusion, the peoples 
of modern Europe are sprung. That they came 
originally from a single family is certain, but 
the German, in the narrower Tacitean sense, 
has kept himself so pre-eminent among his kins- 
men intellectually, morally, and physically, that 
we are justified in applying his name to the 
whole family. The German is the soul of our 
culture. The Europe of to-day, spread far 
over the globe, exhibits the brilliant result of 
an infinitely varied ramification. What binds 
us into one is the Germanic blood. . . . Only 
Germans sit on European thrones. What has 
happened is only prolegomena. . . . True his- 
tory begins from the moment when the German, 
with mighty hand, seizes the inheritance of an- 
tiquity. ' ' 

It would be waste of time to quote here one 
hundredth of the passages in which that Teuton 
Chamberlain shows and ^^ proves,'' that in the 
Germans, and in them alone, there is that mys- 
terious something-or-other, that has enabled 
men of German blood to do the great things 
of the past. Of course, all the great men of the 
past were, when you scrutinise them more 
closely, nothing but Germans. So was, for in- 



16 GERMANY'S MADNESS 

stance, Dante, whose face, Chamberlain says, 
is ^^characteristically Grerman.'' So was, one 
need scarcely insist, St. Francis of Assisi ; and 
Pascal, whom some people are still foolish 
enough to consider one of the greatest of 
Frenchmen, was, the redoubtable Chamberlain 
says, nothing more nor less than a German. 
Did he not oppose the Jesuits'? 

After these master-strokes of critical analy- 
sis, no one, we hope, will feel inordinately 
moved by reading what Chamberlain has to say 
about Jesus. One is, of course, nowadays, 
quite used to hearing all sorts of remarks on 
the great personalities of the Bible. Moses 
has long been reduced to an emigration-agent, 
or to the modest predecessor of Messrs. Thomas 
Cook and Son. David, otherwise quite a nice 
young man, has long been shown up as a plag- 
iarist, who took, it is true, his best inspirations 
from the hacks of the '^British Museum" in 
Jerusalem, four hundred years after his death. 
All this is well known. We are likewise quite 
prepared to Campbellize the central figure of 
Christianity into a fairly successful cardboard 
model of a goody-goody man. But how im- 
measurably greater than all this is Chamber- 
lain ! He has it, at first hand, that Jesus was 



GERMANY'S MADNESS 17 

• no Jew at all. He has no doubt about it. He 
says with the simplicity so characteristic of 
Prussian thought: — 

''Whoever maintains that Christ was a Jew 
is either ignorant or dishonest: ignorant if he 
confuses religion and race, dishonest if he 
knows the history of Galilee. . . . The prob- 
ability that Christ was not a Jew, that He had 
not a drop of pure Jewish blood in His veins, 
is so great that it is almost a certainty. To 
what race did He then belong? To that there 
is no answer. ..." 

After which. Chamberlain indulges in con- 
jectures. Perhaps, he says, Jesus was an As- 
syrian colonist. On further consideration, he 
finds that Assyria won't do. He then turns 
westward, and opines that Jesus was probably 
a Greek. This inability of Mr. Chamberlain 
to find the obvious, is rather strange. Some 
men of genius are like that. Although there 
can, seriously speaking, be no doubt whatever 
to what great nation Jesus did belong. Cham- 
berlain, the apostle of that great nation, failed 
to see it. How strange ! How wonderfully in- 
tricate are the paths of thy wanderings, oh 
Truth ! 

But Germany is greater even than Mr. H. S. 



18 GERMANY'S MADNESS 

Chamberlain. In due time, slie went into trav- 
ail and gave birth to the man who saw what 
Mr. Chamberlain could not see. We mean, of 
course, the obvious fact, the manifest truth, that 
Jesus — was a German. The kind reader is 
asked to study a ponderous volume by J. L. 
Reimer, entitled ^^A Pan-German Germany'' 
{Ein P anger manisches Deutschland, 1905) on 
pages 232, 233. There he will find arguments 
expressed in the best University slang of Ber- 
lin, and submitted with becoming seriousness, 
to the effect that, if Jesus was not of German 
origin. He was a fraud. Nobody can sincerely 
say He was a fraud. Ergo, He was a German. 
Or was He not blond! Had He not blue eyes, 
and that roseate skin so clearly indicative of 
German complexion? If this is not convincing 
(and of course there are men so obdurate as not 
to be convinced by any argument of that kind) 
then one has only to analyse the name of Jesus. 
The first syllable, Jes, is clearly an altered 
Ger — , the letter r being frequently treated as 
a vowel, and so dropped altogether, or changed 
into 5. The second syllable -us, is only the 
Latin ending for males, hence equal to the Ger- 
man (or English) man. Can anything be more 
evident? 



GEEMANY^S MADNESS 19 

It is thus quite beyond any reasonable doubt, 
say the German thinkers, that all Northern, 
North- Western, Central, Eastern, and South- 
Eastern nations are really Germans. When, 
therefore, the Kaiser speaks of Greater Ger- 
many, of the Germans in general, he, in all 
sincerity, means two-thirds of Europe. He 
means that the German Empire of the near 
future will, and by right of Eace ought to, com- 
prise two-thirds of Europe. 

This, we are convinced, will appear to most 
British readers too childish an idea to be worth 
serious consideration. The average man in 
England will say to himself: **Even granted 
that a few writers in Germany do entertain such 
extravagant ideas, surely one cannot admit that 
the bulk of the Germans accept them as serious 
principles of German politics. In all countries 
there have been single eccentrics who absurdly 
overrated the significance and importance of 
their nation. Scotsmen have laboriously 
proved that Adam was a Scot. Some English- 
men have written heavy books on the English 
being the *lost ten tribes.' Americans, if 
we are to believe some of their writers, nearly 
all come from Oliver Cromwell ; and, as Thack- 
eray used to say, one cannot wonder that The 



20 GERMANY'S MADNESS 

Conqueror won the battle of Hastings, since so 
many ancestors ^canie over with the Con- 
queror. ' '' 

There is much common sense in all this. Sin- 
gle eccentrics do not prove very much as to the 
state of mind of the majority of a people. 
Some years ago the author met at the British 
Museum a countryman of his, a Hungarian, who 
spent all his time and wasted all his efforts 
on a book in which he undertook to prove that 
all the great leaders of mankind were Hungar- 
ians. The only difference with regard to such 
solitary ^'cranks'' is this — nobody cares for 
what they say or write. Their works are be- 
lieved in only by a few fellow-invalids, and en- 
joyed by knowing lovers of odd books. But, 
in the case of Germany, as she has recently de- 
veloped, the state of affairs is essentially and 
completely different. 

That which, in other countries, never rises be- 
yond a mere oddity is, in contemporary Ger- 
many, a vast wave of national thought. In the 
Fatherland, as has long been remarked by many 
an observing traveller or scholar, the writers, 
teachers, journalists, and scholars of the day 
have an infinitely greater influence on the peo- 
ple, than similar brain-workers ever wield in 



- GERMANY'S MADNESS 21 

England. German political unity was really set 
in motion by German thonght, that is, by the in- 
credible influence of German professors, poets, 
and writers. Once these bookmen take up an 
idea, be it ever so nebulous, it is sure to fall, 
in due time, as fertilising rain upon the rough 
soil of Germany. 

. The reader is therefore asked never to for- 
get that, no matter how laughable and childish 
those Pan-German ideas may be, they are at the 
same time most serious, on account of the effect 
they have had on the Germans. In this world 
there is no greater power than effect. To laugh 
at a thing because it is laughable is, in political 
matters, most unsound. Once already, in the 
sixteenth century, a German undertook some- 
thing that moved the then Pope to peals of 
laughter. It appeared to Pope Leo X. too 
ludicrous for words that Luther, a poor and 
helpless Austin monk and professor in Ger- 
many, wanted to upset the Papal power. Yet 
that helpless German did upset very much of 
the Papal power. The Pope's power seemed 
then as great, if not very much greater, than, is 
the power of the British navy to-day. 

If, then, we are now going to tell the reader 
more of the boundlessly fatuous ideas enter- 



22 GERMANY'S MADNESS 

tained by the Grermans with regard to the 
power, destiny, and ^* evident vocation" of their 
Race, we do so firstly, because we should like 
to warn him of the very great danger implied 
in beliefs of that kind shared by practically all 
the sixty million Germans; secondly, and only 
as a minor motive, because we want him to en- 
joy thoroughly the grim humour of the thing. 

AUL GKEAT MEN HAVE BEEN GERMANS ! 

We have seen that the Kaiser and the most 
popular writers in Germany have rapidly come 
to the conclusion that all the great men of the 
past, from Jesus downwards, were either pure 
or mixed Germans. But, so far, we have heard 
this statement only as a vague opinion. Now 
we are going to see how elaborately this state- 
ment has been proved in various works written 
by German scholars. 

The underlying contention of the whole mat- 
ter is, of course, very transparent. The Ger- 
mans who boldly say that the twentieth century 
is theirs, just as the sixteenth belonged to the 
Spanish, the seventeenth to the French, and the 
eighteenth to the English, the Germans, we say, 
want to go one better than all the nations. For, 
while the Spanish or English were satisfied to 



GERMANY'S MADNESS 23 

call one century theirs, the Germans want to 
show, not only that the twentieth century will 
be theirs, but that as a matter of fact all the 
preceding centuries were, properly considered, 
also theirs. 

Such views would not appeal very strongly 
to the English, who as a rule, do not trouble 
themselves very much about former centuries. 
But, in Germany, thanks to the great attention 
paid to the teaching of history in all the public 
schools, every schoolboy knows the names of 
Italy, France, or Spain. Everybody there 
knows something about Dante, Raphael, 
Michelangelo Buonarotti, Leonardo da Vinci, 
Machiavelli; or such Frenchmen as Rabelais, 
Montaigne, Pascal, Descartes. He has, when 
young, been taught to consider these men as the 
glories of humanity. When, now, a learned 
German proves to him, in an elaborate book, 
that all these summits were only peaks of the 
German Alps, the effect upon that German is 
immense. His pride in his nationality is in- 
creased and intensified to an extraordinary de- 
gree. He cannot help thinking that German 
blood, German ideas, German influence, and, in 
short, everything German has by nature some- 
thing utterly superior to anything non-German. 



24 GERMANY ^S MADNESS 

The whole perspective of life is changed within 
him. He alters his former bearings; he takes 
a new view of the world; that is, he gets what 
the Germans call a world-view, or Weltan- 
schauung of a new type. 

To underrate this sort of thing, to speak 
lightly of such a wholesale change in the men- 
tality of the nation which, amongst advanced 
peoples in Europe, is the most populous, would 
be too futile for words. On the contrary, we 
have to weigh it very carefully ; we must take it 
into close consideration. It is out of such 
vague but persistent feelings that a nation 
forges its most formidable weapons of aggres- 
siveness. 

It is for this reason that we are here going to 
give a few extracts from the works of Ludwig 
Woltmann, who, in two books published recently, 
tells the Germans that most of the immortals 
of Italy and France were, properly speaking, 
of German blood. The British reader may not, 
and we trust will not, agree with the opinions of 
Mr. Woltmann. This, however, is not the point 
at all. The real interest is in the fact that 
Woltmann 's views have been taken by the Ger- 
mans very seriously indeed, that they have 
been, and are being discussed in the gravest 



GERMANY'S MADNESS 25 

of German historical and ethnological reviews, 
and that their effect upon the average German 
is nothing short of extraordinary. In other 
words, the late Woltmann may be, and we have 
no doubt, is hopelessly wrong; but the effect of 
his works on the most responsible of German 
writers and readers is very considerable. 

His chief instrument in proving that the 
great men of the Italian Renascence, or the 
wonderful painters, sculptors, thinkers, and 
poets of fifteenth and sixteenth century Italy, 
were all Germans," is thus constructed. Wolt- 
mann, together with a great number of English 
and Continental anthropologists, takes it for 
granted, that there are in Europe a number of 
separate Races. More especially, there is the 
Northern or Germanic Race, with a long head 
(dolichocephalic), blond hair, and blue eyes; 
and the Mediterranean Race, with a short and 
round head, and swarthy complexion. When- 
ever he finds that an Italian is reported as hav- 
ing been of a long-headed, blond, and blue-eyed 
appearance, he has little doubt that the mother 
of that Italian had, if secretly, preferred the 
embraces of some doughty German. And if 
one considers that the Germans have at all 
times been the roving mercenaries, lackeys. 



26 GERMANY'S MADNESS 

clerks, and waiters of all Europe, it is not im- 
possible to assume tliat wherever Mr. Wolt- 
mann needs a German substitute for the more 
legitimate work of paternity, he can freely 
draw upon some one German lackey or butler 
or waiter for the emergency. 

In order to fortify his surreptitious fathers 
in their claims to glory, Woltmann makes free 
use of that beautiful method of German philo- 
logians, by means of which one can conveniently 
prove what one pleases. Thus, it is not quite 
evident to the untutored mind of the ordinary 
mortal how Mr. Cecil Rhodes can be said to be 
of the family of the late President Kriiger. 
But for a German philologian this apparently 
impossible problem does not offer serious dif- 
ficulties. Rhodes is named — ^who can doubt it? 
— after the famous island in the Eastern Medi- 
terranean, of which the Greek proverb used to 
say : ^ ^ Here is Rhodes — jump here ! ' ^ meaning, 
that any man boasting of his being able to jump 
anything, was asked at Rhodes to jump the 
width of the enormous harbour of the capital 
of that island. That clearly proves that Cecil 
Rhodes was boastful. So was, some people say, 
the late President Kriiger. Accordingly, both 
were of the same family. To disguise that. 



GERMANY'S MADNESS 27 

Cecil Rhodes, who was so fond of Greek and 
Roman antiquities as to have nearly all the 
Greek and Latin classics specially translated 
for his use, chose a classical name suggestive 
of a colossus, the colossus of Rhodes. Can any- 
thing be simpler ? In very much the same way, 
Herr Woltmann shows that most of the great 
Renascence men of Italy were Germans. 

The reader is asked to read the following ex- 
tracts from Woltmann 's Die Germanen und die 
Renaissance in Italien (1905) with great atten- 
tion. 

Again and again we beg to remind the reader 
that the evident absurdity of Woltmann 's views 
is not the point at all. We deal here with the 
mental state of a whole nation. A people like 
the modern Germans, who can take such views 
in dead earnestness, are either hopelessly de- 
cadent, or dangerously excited, overweeningly 
conceited, and perilously swelled-headed. Now, 
it is an absolute fact that Woltmann 's views 
have been taken very seriously indeed. 

One of the oldest, most respectable Profes- 
soren-Blatt, or reviews, written mostly by and 
for German University Professors, the Beilage 
(Supplement) to the MuncJiener Allgemeine 
Zeitung, and other reviews (especially the 



28 GERMANY'S MADNESS 

Liter ar is ches Centralhlatt) equally serious, 
have reported on Woltmann's book, with a 
gravity and an interest generally devoted to 
first-class scientific works only. In reading the 
following extracts, the British citizen must 
therefore be aware of the fact that he is reading 
an absurd opinion shared by thousands of 
highly instructed and influential Germans. • We 
leave it to our readers to appreciate the polit- 
ical dangerousness of such opinions. 

Woltmann takes one great Eenascence Ital- 
ian after the other, and comes to the conclu- 
sion that they were all Germans. He says : 

*'Benvenuto Cellini (1500-71). — His por- 
trait by Vasari is in the Palazzo Vecchio in the 
picture representing Cosimo in the circle of the 
artists of his time: a head-piece between Cos- 
imo and Tribolo seated at his left. The hair 
on his head is brown and slightly disposed in 
locks, the beard blond, inclining to reddish. To 
judge from the photograph, the eyes are light 
in colour, presumably blue, as blue eyes alone 
are wont to give in photography so light a re- 
flex.^' (p. 75.)^ 

^^Michelangelo Buonarotti (1475-1564). — 

1 Surely the painting itself might have been seen by this 
erudite German. — Ed. 



GERMANY ^S MADNESS 29 

(=Bernhard) ancestor of the family, lived in 
Florence about 1210. He had two sons, Ber- 
linghieri and Buonarrota, the former of whom 
had likewise a son, Buonarrota. By this name, 
recurring frequently in later generations, the 
family came to be called. It is a Grerman name, 
compounded of Bona (=Bohn [probably the 
ancestors of the publishers, Messrs, Bell and 
Son,] Bonne) and Hrodo, Roto (=:Rohde, 
Rothe), Bona and Rotto are cited as Lombard 
names. Buonarotti is perhaps the old Lom- 
bard Beonrad, corresponding to the word Bon- 
roth. Corresponding names are Mackrodt, 
Osterroth, Leonard. According to Condivi the 
Buonarroti spring from the family of the 
Counts of Canossa, a noble Lombard gens in 
the territory of Reggio, related to the Emperor 
Henry II. In point of fact the Counts of Can- 
ossa always looked on the artist as a relation. 
Of Michelangelo's bodily presence we have pre- 
cise and essentially accordant descriptions by 
Vasari and Condivi. In his Life of M.B, A. 
Condivi writes: * Michelangelo is of well-built 
body, sinewy and bony rather than fleshy and 
fat ; sound, more than anything else, both by na- 
ture, by bodily exercise and by abstinence, 
though as a child he was weakly and subject to 



30 GEEMANY^S MADNESS 

fits. In his face he has always been well- 
coloured. Of medium stature, he is broad 
shouldered, but in the rest of his body weak 
rather than robust. The temples strongly pro- 
ject, more than the ears. His nose has a some- 
what crushed appearance, not by nature, but 
from the stroke of a fist he received in his youth 
on the cartilage of the nose. The brow in pro- 
file projects beyond the nose. The eyebrows 
have a scanty fringe of hair. The eyes might 
be called small rather than large, of the colour 
of horn, but variable with ^^ flecks'^ of yellow 
and blue. Hair and beard are black. These 
particulars are confirmed by the portraits. 
First and foremost take the portrait by Bugiar- 
dini in Museo Buonarroti. Here comes to view 
the ** flecked'' appearance of the iris, especially 
in the right eye. The left may be described as 
almost wholly blue. The lateral projection of 
the skull over the ears is to be explained by an 
abnormal growth of bone. Michel appears to 
have been rachitic and hydrocephalus, which 
may be connected with the fits of his youth. 
From the remark that his face was highly 
coloured, it may be concluded that his cheeks 
were of fresh, ruddy hue. In the Museo Civico, 
at Pavia, is a fresco likeness by an unknown 



GERMANY ^S MADNESS 31 

hand, in which this fresh red is distinctly recog- 
nisable on the face. Taking all these bodily 
characteristics into consideration, it must be 
said from an anthropological point of view that 
though originally of German family, he was a 
hybrid between the North and "West brunette 
race/ " (pp. 73-4.) 

*'LoKENzo Ghiberti (1378-1455). — The name 
of the Ghiberti, who are first mentioned in 1260 
among the Guelf families in Florence, is de- 
rived from Old High German Wiberto Guiberto, 
New High German Wilbert. As Vasari re- 
ports in Life of L.G., he set his likeness in the 
bronze of the Baptistery in Florence. In his 
work Vasari presents a profile likeness evi- 
dently drawn after this bronze head. I have 
more minutely studied the anthropological 
characteristics of this head on a gypsum cast. 
The skull is very long and small, index about 
73, therefore pronouncedly dolichocephalic. 
The face, too, is long and small, the nose lightly 
curved, the hair disposed in locks, though noth- 
ing is reported as to the colour of the hair and 
eyes, yet, on the ground of the family name 
and the build of head and face, we may with 
great certainty assume that he was descended 
from the Germans. '^ (pp. 69-70.) 



32 OEEMANY^S MADNESS 

*' Giovanni Bellini (1426-1507) has left two 
likenesses by himself; one in the Uffizi, the 
other in the Conservatoire Palace in Kome. 
Both show German features of face, light straw 
yellow hair and bine eyes. Bellini is from Old 
High German Belo, Bella, Bellin.'' (p. 80.) 

** Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1517) or, as he 
called himself, Leonardo Vinci, came of a noble 
family, the earliest extant document about 
whom, dated 1339, is signed by a Florentine 
notary. He was born in an old Castle to the 
N. of Empoli, of which a tower and some walls 
still remain. The Castle, in olden time 'Cas- 
serodi Vinci,' is evidently named after a Ger- 
man Knight Vinco {= Winke, Vincke). In the 
neighbourhood are several castles and villages 
with old German names, such as Cerreto Guidi, 
Lamporrechio ( = Lamprecht) and Tizzana 
(Tizzo = Tietz). Some mile and a half {halhe 
Stunde) NE. of Vinci, on the slope of Monte 
Albano, lies a ^Luogo d'Anchiano,' where a 
Castle is said to have formerly stood, the name 
of which is derived from the old German Ango 
(— Anke, Enke). Here the family Vinci had a 
country house, in which was bom Leonardo, in 
the midst of a district once peopled by Ger- 
mans. In the valleys and on the slopes of 



GERMANY'S MADNESS 33 

Monte Albano, at a distance from the great 
highway, you still find among the peasantry 
many blond and blue-eyed men, in all likelihood 
the remains of the Gothic tribe. Out of this 
soil sprang the otherwise unknown Caterina, 
mother of Leonardo, a lady, 'que era di hon 
sangue/ of a robust and sound stamp of hu- 
manity. Like his nephew Pieroda Vinci, a 
sculptor, Leonardo was tall and strong in bodily 
make, the hair of his head and his beard hang- 
ing down to the middle of his chest. The like- 
ness of himself in red chalk in the Pinacotheo 
at Turin shows the head of a greybeard, with 
small, high-arched brow, small face, and 
slightly aquiline nose. A profile likeness in 
Windsor Library presents a skull of great 
measure lengthwise. In the ^ self -likenesses' in 
the Uffizi, is a portrait of Leonardo, though not 
possibly by Leonardo himself, and it may be 
assumed to have been taken from life. It 
shows him with blond hair on head, blond beard, 
and blue eyes. Leonardo's blond complexion 
is not reported in so many words by his biog- 
raphers, but the constantly extolled beauty of 
his hair almost implies it, seeing that for the 
Italian, and especially of the Renaissance, 
blond hair was the characteristic of physical 



34 GERMANY'S MADNESS 

beauty. A figure in ^Tlie Three Archangels 
and Tobias' — by Verrochio, according to the 
prevailing view — ^presents the picture of a slim 
and tall-grown youth, with large blue eyes, yel- 
low hair, finely shaped and expressive features, 
which one may conjecture to be the portrait of 
Leonardo. Altogether, from biographical and 
iconographic sources, Leonardo's anthropolog- 
ical features may be summed up as follows: 
Tall and strong figure; long and small skull; 
face of like conformation, with lightly curved 
nose, light complexion, large blue eyes; blond 
hair of head curled in ringlets; blond beard. 
If any among the great Italians, Leonardo was 
a pure and unmixed scion of the German race. ' ' 
(pp. 83-6.) 

^^Raffael Santt (1483-1520).— As shown by 
Passavant, there lived in Colbordolo, Raffael's 
father's birthplace, about the first half of the 
fourteenth century a certain Sante, giving the 
family name of Sante or Santi to his descend- 
ants. The name of the Castle Colbordolo is 
of old German origin, analogous to Heribord; 
Heltiport, and similar names. Like its deriv- 
atives Santini, Santoni, Santi is equally a Ger- 
man name, corresponding to Sandt in New 
High German. Raffael's mother, Magia 



GEKMANY'S MADNESS 35 

Ciarla, was the daughter of a merchant in Ur- 
bino. According to Muratori, Ciarla is said to 
be derived from Charles and to have been 
brought to Italy by the Franks. In this case 
it would be equivalent to the old German Carla. 
Nothing certain is known of the bodily presence 
of BaffaePs father, Giovanni. In the case di 
Raffaelo in Urbino, however, is a fresco like- 
ness, let into the wall, from Giovanni's hand, 
presenting Frau Magia and Baifael as Ma- 
donna with the Bambino. It is remarkable how 
scanty are the notices left by his contempora- 
ries regarding Baffael's exterior. BaifaePs 
likeness of himself in the Uffizi shows us the 
painter at the age of twenty-three. This pic- 
ture has, however, been several times painted 
over, and only mouth and nose remain intact. 
In this portrait we find Baffael with a nobly 
shaped and small face, soft grey eyes, with a 
slight inclination to brownish, and dark blond 
hair shading into reddish. 

**In the Berlin Museum is an altar piece of 
Giovanni Santi, representing Mary and the 
Child Jesus, which has always been taken to be 
the image of Baffael and his mother. Both 
have light blond hair. The child has blue eyes, 
whereas the mother has grey eyes, dashed with 



36 GERMANY'S MADNESS 

a bluish and brownish glimmer. In the fresco 
likeness at Urbino above-mentioned, both 
have light blond hair. The child's eyes are 
unfortunately closed, the mother's are of a 
mixed grey. There is further, a likeness of 
Raffael in his sixteenth year, ascribed to his 
father, a good copy of which is in the Hanover 
Museum. Here Raifael has yellow blond hair 
and dark grey eyes. In the Libreria of Siena 
Cathedral, Ratfael and his teacher Pinturicchio 
are, in Catherine's Canonization, presented, 
full figure, as taper bearers. Both have blond 
hair and rosy-white skin. Whereas, however, 
Pinturicchio shows eyes of distinct blue, corres- 
ponding to those of his self-portrait in Spello, 
Raffael has grey-yellow eyes. To this likeness 
of Raffael by Pinturicchio, then his teacher, 
must be attached the greatest importance in 
forming a judgment of his physical type. Of 
the identity there can be no doubt. Here more 
particularly is the so characteristic dropping 
of the upper eyelid. Altogether it may with 
great certainty be concluded that in his youth 
Raffael had light blond hair and bluish eyes, 
but with advancing age hair and eyes assumed 
a somewhat darker shading. 

^'Raffael's skeleton, found in the Pantheon, 



GEEMANY'S MADNESS 37 

was five feet two inches, Parisian measure = 
167-5 cm. long. The skull was small. 

^^G. K. ISTagler, too, in his Rafael als 
MenscJi und Kiinstler writes: ^His features 
were of regular beauty, the eye clear and pure, 
the mirror of a beautiful soul ; the form of the 
head was oval, and the hair blond till with the 
progress of the years it inclined slightly to 
brownish.' '' (pp. 89-91.) 

The British reader of the preceding extracts 
will probably think that in such stuff and twad- 
dle there is not much to frighten serious men. 
Nor is there. We do not mean to assert 
that the stuff itself, or, in other words, that 
Herr Woltmann's misplaced erudition, has, by 
itself, any value whatever. The great men of 
the Italian Eenascence were no more German 
in mind or body than they were Yankees. But 
what cannot be taken too seriously, we contend, 
is the effect of such stuff on the mind of the 
German nation. The stuff is wretched enough, 
but its effect is a most important matter. 

EESULTANT SWELLED-HEADEDNESS 

One can readily understand that the British, 
themselves, calm in their strength, are inclined 
to treat such vagaries as strong men generally 



38 GERMANY'S MADNESS 

treat the extravagances of boys. But one can- 
not quite understand that the British, on learn- 
ing that these vagaries of a great number of 
German writers have fairly dazed the German 
people, still continue to smile with tranquillity. 
This, it would appear to us, is in the highest 
degree impolitic. The actions of a nation like 
the Germans are, in the first place, influenced 
by their state of mind; and, given that that 
state of mind in Germany is now one bordering 
on absolute megalomania, or the most morbid 
form of self-conceit and swelled-headedness, it 
is safe to conclude that their actions, too, will 
soon assume forms of the most daring self-as- 
sertiveness and aggression. 

In this country, Germany and the Germans 
are practically as unknown and as poorly under- 
stood as if they lived somewhere in Central 
Asia, and not within eight hours' sailing from 
England. Their literature is so little known 
that more than once the author was asked by 
Englishmen whether the Germans had three 
or four writers of note. The following story 
is absolutely true, if intensely humorous. A 
rich city merchant invited to one of his recep- 
tions a number of literary people. The conver- 
sation for a time touched upon German litera- 



GERMANY'S MADNESS 39 

tnre, and amongst other names that of Goethe 
was frequently mentioned. The host had never 
heard that name before. Rather annoyed by 
the constant recurrence of that name, he asked 
one of his literary guests who Goethe was. 
He received the answer that Goethe was one of 
the great German poets. Thereupon the city 
merchant indignantly exclaimed: ^^Of course, 
we know him, but we call him over here 
^Schiller' 'M 

What, indeed, does the average Briton know 
of the vast wave of Imperialism that has 
flooded the hearts and the minds of the Ger- 
mans! Does he ever read the Alldeutsche 
Blatter J the organ of the Pan-Germanists ! ^ 
Does he study the Deutsche Erde, a geograph- 
ical review devoted to Pan-German interests! 
Has he ever heard of the periodicals and books 
treating of the '^necessary,'' ^'inevitable," and 
*'providentiaP' spread of the German Empire 
over Europe and the globe! Has he ever at- 
tempted to appreciate aright the effect of this 
constant and unremitting excitement of impe- 
rialist fever that has, these twenty-five years, 
seized the Germans! It never enters his mind 
to think of it, to pay the slightest attention to 

2 Even the British Museum Library has no copy of it. 



40 GERMANY'S MADNESS 

it. Occasionally, it is true, the Briton is 
roused to anger or indignation by an utterance 
or act of the Kaiser or his Chancellor. How- 
ever, influential as these two dignitaries may be, 
they are not the most effective of the Imperial- 
ists in Germany. The most effective are those 
German authors who, like Professor Treitschke, 
Herr Woltmann, Mr. H. S. Chamberlain, Herr 
Eeimer, Herr Hasse, Count Ernst Reventlow, 
and a host of others, instil the poison of megalo- 
mania into the Germans in the one manner in 
which the Germans will take it in the largest 
doses. 

GERMANY IS AN UPSTART 

Perhaps the following consideration will 
help the reader to see the matter in its true pro- 
portions. The most ignorant is aware of the 
fact that Germany is an upstart ; that her exis- 
tence as a Great Power is, so to speak, of yes- 
terday. As to Prussia, she was a little over 
250 years ago a small State under the suzer- 
ainty of the King of Poland; and six hundred 
years ago most of the Prussians proper were 
still heathens, talking a Slav language. It was 
only by the end of the thirteenth century that 
the Prussi were converted to Christianity. 



4 



GERMANY'S MADNESS 41 

Some South-German people contend that this 
conversion is not complete even in our days. 

It is common knowledge that, of all the kinds 
of intractable pride, the pride of the upstart is 
the worst, the least amenable to sound limits. 
For centuries and centuries the Germans have 
been buffeted about by the French, English, 
Swedes, Poles, and formerly even by the Hun- 
garians. For centuries the German Princes, 
hat in hand, went the round of all the Courts of 
Europe, begging for subsidies, kissing hands 
and licking shoes of various powerful ministers, 
mistresses, kings, popes and generals. For 
centuries they were used and utilised like so 
many flunkeys by the older and more powerful 
nations around them. The Prussian rulers es- 
pecially, whether the so-called Great Elector, 
who died in 1688, or Frederick William I., in 
the eighteenth century, and Frederick William 
the Fourth in the nineteenth, were forced to 
eat many a humble pie and, as the French say, 
to swallow many a snake. Over one-half of the 
British State debt is composed of moneys 
thrown as sops, compensation, salaries, or 
bribes to innumerable German Princes during 
the seventeenth, eighteenth, and part of the 
nineteenth centuries. 



42 GERMANY'S MADNESS 

As in matters of politics and State life, so 
it was also in matters of private life. Of all 
the nations of Europe, the Germans form the 
largest contingents of * ^ foreigners ' ' in various 
non-German countries. The Germans outside 
Germany and Austria are very much more 
numerous than either the Jews, the Chinese, 
or the gypsies. Millions of them are in Amer- 
ica, in Russia, everywhere. Millions and mil- 
lions of them are in the demoralising condition 
of expatriated, de-nationalized men and women. 
All that tells. All that leaves deep, indelible 
traces on the soul. It rankles in the heart; it 
embitters; it pricks and prods, until one day 
the mass of moral kindling takes iire, and then 
we have the prairie fire of a nation inflamed 
with a secular cry for vengeance, for the reha- 
bilitation of their status as a nation and as in- 
dividuals. It is a sort of Jacquerie or peasant- 
rising on a vast national scale. The peasants, 
too, after enduring all sorts of humiliation, 
finally rise, and then — woe to all humanity! 
Castles and their tenants are burned; men, 
women, and children are slaughtered. The hu- 
man beast appears in its most hideous form. 

The following incident has been told fre- 
quently enough; it can never be told too fre- 



GERMANY'S MADNESS 43 

quently. When Adolphe Thiers, subsequently 
President of the French Republic, went to the 
various Courts of Europe, imploring them to 
help France, which was then at the feet of the 
victorious Germans, he met, at Vienna, the 
German historian Ranke, the man who in his 
numerous works had written up all the igno- 
minies, humiliations, and indignities of Ger- 
man history. Thiers asked Ranke against 
whom the Germans were fighting after Sedan, 
since Napoleon III. was long their prisoner. 
^'Against whom!" Ranke exclaimed; ^'against 
Louis XIV.!" Now, Louis XIV. died in 1715, 
or over 150 years before the date of this con- 
versation between Thiers and Ranke. Yet, 
Ranke did not by any means exaggerate. The 
humiliations inflicted upon the rulers of Ger- 
many by Louis XIV. had been so revolting that, 
after five generations, the Germans were unable 
to forget them. It was at the very palace of 
Louis XIV. that the assembled German Princes 
solemnly united in the establishment of the Ger- 
man Empire. The insult of 1681, when Louis 
captured Strassburg in the midst of peace, 
burned with the same fire in 1871. In fact, it 
is only the common sense of the whole of Ger- 
man history to say that, for centuries, they were 



44 GERMANY'S MADNESS 

accustomed to endure nameless insults at the 
hands of nearly all the nations around them, so 
that, whenever a Swedish or French conqueror 
spat into their faces, they exclaimed only: 
*^Does it rain, I wonder!'' 

THE SAVIOUKS OF THE: WORLD 

Now, let any one of some experience of life 
ask himself what may be expected from a per- 
son that has hitherto been lectured, insulted, 
and sweated by individuals whose superior he 
is now sure to be. It would surpass all human 
nature to keep one's head quite level under 
such circumstances. The Germans know that 
they are, or are held to be, the military supe- 
riors of any two or three of the nations sur- 
rounding them. Their innumerable writers, 
professors, journalists, poets, and politicians 
tell them so unceasingly, every day, in every 
paper, scientifically, learnedly, or philosophic- 
ally. They hear that it was really they who 
saved the world in the past. 

Just read the following extract from Cham- 
berlain's book. He speaks of the wild Ger- 
mans who invaded the Roman Empire. Of 
those savage hordes. Chamberlain says : — 

^^This barbarian, who prefers to enter the 



GERMANY'S MADNESS 45 

battle naked, the savage, who suddenly rises np 
out of woods and marshes, to pour upon a civil- 
ised and cultivated world the horrors of a 
mighty conquest, and fights with the bare fist, 
is nevertheless the lawful heir of the Greek and 
the Roman, blood of their blood, and spirit of 
their spirit. What he unknowingly tears from 
strange hands is his own. But for him, the day 
of the Indo-European was passing to its end. 
The Asiatic and African slave had crept mur- 
derously up to the throne of the Roman Em- 
pire, while the Syrian bastard was seizing upon 
legislation, the Jew was using the library of 
Alexandria to adapt Greek philosophy to the 
Mosaic law; soon, too, the Mongolian was to 
crush under his savage blood-stained foot the 
sublime blossoms of the primal Aryan {iirari- 
schen) life: Indian thought, Indian poetry; and 
the Bedouin, intoxicated with the madness of 
devastation, was to burn that Garden of Eden, 
Erania, in which for thousands of years all the 
symbolism of the world had grown up, into an 
eternal desert; art had long ceased to exist, 
and there was for the rich only formality 
{Schahlonen), for the poor circus-riding; there- 
fore, to use Schiller's phrase, there were no 
longer men, but only creatures. It was high 



46 GERMANY'S MADNESS 

time that the deliverer appeared. . . . We can 
regret only one thing — that the German did not, 
everywhere his conquering arm preyed, extermi- 
nate more completely, and that, in consequence 
of this, the so-called Latinization, i.e., the mar- 
riage with the chaos of peoples, gradually re- 
covered wide territories from the only quick- 
ening influence of pure blood and unbroken 
youth, in fact, from the control of the highest 
talent.'' 

In other words, but for the Germans over- 
running the Roman Empire — that is, but for 
this, the most unfortunate event of all Euro- 
pean history — Europe could, so the Germans 
are now taught, never have been saved by ' * the 
only quickening influence of pure blood and 
unbroken youth." Just think of the nonsense 
of it all! These *' fallen and corrupt" Romans 
and Greeks forged, throughout the time when 
the ^'pure and unbroken" Germans invaded and 
^^ saved" them, the mightiest weapon of organ- 
isation and civilisation that had up to that time 
appeared in human history: the Roman Cath- 
olic Church. But for that Church and her re- 
demption and colonisation of more than one- 
half of the soil of Europe, we should still, in 
company with the Germans, eat glands in the 



GEKMANY'S MADNESS 47 

wild forests and swamps of Lancasliire or Han- 
over. 

But can any one wonder at this wholesale 
distortion of all history, when one reads what 
the contemporary German writers and thinkers 
and statesmen tell the Germans to think of 
themselves! The reader is asked to go pa- 
tiently over the following extracts, and to con- 
sider that such excessive and wicked flattery 
is made to a nation that has, as we just saw, 
barely emerged out of a secular state of polit- 
ical inferiority. No more dangerous microbe 
could be implanted in the organism of a peo- 
ple. 

Friedrich Lange, erstwhile editor of the Tag- 
liche Rundschau, has gone so far as to invent 
and preach a species of ^'German religion'' 
(Deutsche Religion), and from many pulpits it 
has been announced that 'Hhe German people 
is the elect of God, and its enemies are the ene- 
mies of the Lord.'' 

Chamberlain teaches the Germans as fol- 
lows : — ^ ^ Who can live in Italy to-day and mix 
with its amiable and highly-gifted inhabitants 
without feeling with pain that here a great na- 
tion is lost, irredeemably lost, because it lacks 
the inner driving power, the greatness of soul. 



48 GERMANY'S MADNESS 

which would fit its talent *? This power comes 
from Eace alone. Italy had it as long as it 
possessed Germans: nay, even to-day, in those 
parts which were formerly occupied especially 
by Kelts, Germans, and Normans, the popula- 
tion develops the true German industry, and 
brings forth men who strive with desperate 
energy to keep the country together and to lead 
it in glorious paths. Cavour, the founder of 
the new kingdom, springs from the extreme 
North ; Crispi, who knew how to steer it through 
dangerous rocks, from the extreme South. 

^^ Fidelity is found in nearly all pure-bred 
races, e.g., never more than in negroes; and 
what man could show more fidelity than the 
noble dog? This fidelity and that freedom do 
not grow one out of the other, but are two 
phenomena of the same character, of which 
one is more of the intellectual, the other more 
of the moral, side. The negro and the dog 
serve their master, whoever he is: that is the 
morality of the weak, or, as Aristotle has it, 
of him who is naturally born to be a slave. The 
German chooses his master, and therefore his 
fidelity is fidelity to himself : that is the morality 
of the free-born.'' For this reason. Chamber- 
lain intimates, it is correct to consider St. Paul 



GERM ANY 'S MADNESS 49 

of German origin. This incredible freak of the 
perverted historical sense is put by Chamber- 
lain in the following manner: — *^More decisive 
for my theory is the kinship of the deeper 
spiritual dispositions between Kelts and Ger- 
mans. . . . Does one, then, think it is a mere 
accident that St. Paul addressed his epistle on 
Redemption by Faith, etc., to the Galatians, to 
those Gallic Greeks of Asia Minor who had re- 
mained almost purely Keltic — that document in 
which one fancies one hears a German speaking 
who was exceptionally gifted for the under- 
standing of deepest mysteries T' 

Even the wild Goths were noble and tolerant, 
according to Herr Chamberlain, and therefore 
superior to the foul Romans: — **Thus the per- 
fect religious tolerance of the Goths, when they 
became masters of that Roman Empire in which 
the principle of intolerance had so long pre- 
vailed, is as characteristic of German feeling 
as is the protection which they gave to the mon- 
uments of art. We see here those two features : 
fidelity and freedom. . . . The German is the 
most ideal, and at the same time the most prac- 
tical, man in the world, and that, not because 
these are contrasts, but because they are iden- 
tical. The German writes ^Die Kritik der 



50 GERMANY'S MADNESS 

reinen Vernunft/ but invents at the same time 
the railway; the century of Bessemer and Edi- 
son is that of Beethoven and R. Wagner." 

Their writers tell the Germans: — ^^We are 
the best colonists, the best sailors, and even the 
best merchants. . . . We are the most intelli- 
gent nation there is, and the most advanced in 
science and art. . . . We are, without contra- 
diction, the most warlike people on earth.'' 

The sense and passion of everything German 
are carried to such an extent that Bismarck's 
secretary once wrote to the Municipal Council 
of Berlin: — 

^*I have the honour, on behalf of Prince Bis- 
marck, to thank the Municipal Council of the 
Royal City of Berlin for the transmission of 
a pamphlet relating to the fifty-ninth meeting 
of German doctors and naturalists. His High- 
ness regrets, however, that he is unable to take 
cognisance of it, as his principles forbid his 
reading a German text printed in Latin char- 
acters. 

**V. Reinbaben." 

The astonishment of the Municipal Council 
of Berlin was pretty great on receiving this let- 



GERMANY'S MADNESS 51 

ter. It became immense when it was noticed 
that the printed heading of the letter was alone 
in Latin characters. 

GERMANY AND THE FUTUEE 

Can one wonder, under such circumstances, 
that the Kaiser a few years ago, at the cele- 
bration of the 200th anniversary of the founda- 
tion of the Kingdom of Prussia, exclaimed: 
''Nothing must be settled in this world with- 
out the intervention of Germany and of the 
German Emperor. '^ 

In 1905, the Kaiser, on the 28th of April, a 
few days after the conclusion of the Anglo- 
French Entente Cordiale, said, at Carlsruhe: 
' ' Let us remember the great time in which Ger- 
man unity was established on the fields of 
Woerth, Weissemburg, and Sedan. Present 
events invite us to forget internal discords. 
Let us be united in case we should be compelled 
to intervene in the politics of the world.'' On 
1st May at Mayence, at the opening of a new 
bridge, he said: ''This work, destined to de- 
velop peaceful communications, might serve for 
graver purposes." 

After such utterances on the part of a re- 
sponsible ruler, we need not be astonished to 



52 GERMANY'S MADNESS 

learn that irresponsible professors, whose in- 
fluence on the Germans is nevertheless extraor- 
dinary, indulge in far louder dreams. Thus 
Professor Treitschke, the most jingoist of all 
German historians, and also one of their ablest 
writers, says: — 

^^Then, when the German flag flies over and 
protects this vast Empire, to whom will belong 
the sceptre of the universe! What nation will 
impose its wishes on the other enfeebled and 
decadent people 1 Will it not be Germany that 
will have the mission to ensure the peace of the 
world? Eussia, that immense colossus still in 
process of formation, and with feet of clay, will 
be absorbed in its home and economic difficul- 
ties. England, stronger in appearance than in 
reality, will, without any doubt, see her Colonies 
detach themselves from her and exhaust them- 
selves in fruitless struggles. France, given 
over to internal dissensions and the strife of 
parties, will sink into hopeless decadence. As 
to Italy, she will have her work cut out to en- 
sure a crust of bread to her children. . . . The 
future belongs to Germany, to which Austria 
will attach herself if she wishes to survive.'' 

It is under the pressure of such ideas, taught 
in Germany by their foremost writers and 



GERMANY'S MADNESS 53 

thinkers, that the Germans have persuaded 
themselves of the necessity of occupying vast 
territories, both in their own neighbourhood 
and in foreign continents. This Greater Ger- 
many, or the expansion of the German race (as 
if such a thing existed — as if the Germans had 
not the blood of all the nations in them) has 
become a dogma with the Germans. Even in 
their school books it is publicly taught. See 
the following from the manual of Herr Daniel, 
professor of geography at the Royal College at 
Halle:— 

^ ^ France was primarily a small kingdom born 
of the dismemberment of Charlemagne's em- 
pire and bounded by the Rhone and the Saone 
rivers, and has only expanded at the expense 
of Germany; during the Middle Ages Lyons 
and Marseilles were German towns." 

The same author, in an equally classical work 
in use in the schools, gives the ** natural fron- 
tiers of Germany as on the west'' are *Hhe hills 
which extend from Cape Grisnez to the Ar- 
gonne, the plateau of Langres, the faucilles, 
the mountains of Alsace, the heights between 
the Rhine and the Rhone, and the Jura to the 
lake of Geneva." 

If Germans are taught similar political 



54 GERMANY'S MADNESS 

geography about France, the reader may easily 
imagine what they are given to understand 
about the 'inevitable'' destiny of the smaller 
Slav peoples in their neighbourhood. Thus we 
read in Pan-German books : — 

''We sometimes hear the following objection 
from the savants and sages, opponents of the 
Pan-Germanic idea. ' Of what use to us will be 
the Czechs, the Slovenians, and the others? 
Will the Catholics of Austria really represent 
an increase of our power?' To the first ob- 
jection we reply that a universal Germany is 
only possible if the great Slav power Russia 
is crumbled to bits, is completely overthrown. 
Then, when the triumphant German armies oc- 
cupy the country from the Moldau to the Adri- 
atic, it will be possible simply to expel the non- 
German populations from Cisleithania. . . . 
An indemnity may be given them, but the coun- 
try must be cleared and the land colonised by 
Germans. In the event of such momentous hap- 
penings, we would not hesitate to take large 
tracts of territory from France and Russia to 
form the glacis of our frontiers on the east and 
on the west. It would, moreover, be necessary 
to impose as a condition of peace that the na- 
tive should evacuate these provinces and be 



GERMANY'S MADNESS 55 

compensated by the conquered powers. There 
again colonisation would be carried out. That 
is how we propose to enlarge our European 
frontiers. This enlargement has become for 
us a matter of necessity, just as bread is neces- 
sary for our rapidly increasing population. ' ' 

The Vorivdrts has put it on record that, to a 
numerous and sympathetic audience of pro- 
fessors and students of Protestant Theology, 
the theologian Lezius made a speech, which was 
loudly applauded, in which he advised that the 
Prussian Poles should be treated like China- 
men. The following is an extract from this 
prodigious oration : — 

^'Solomon has said: ^Do not be too good; 
do not be too just.' The Polish press should 
be simply annihilated. All Polish societies 
should be suppressed, without the slightest 
apology being made for such a measure. This 
summary procedure should be likewise applied 
to the French and Danish press, as well as to 
the societies of Alsace, Lorraine, and Schleswig- 
Holstein. Especially should no consideration 
whatever be shown to anything relating to the 
Poles. The Constitution should be altered with 
regard to the latter. The Poles should be 
looked upon as helots. They should be allowed 



56 GERMANY'S MADNESS 

but three privileges : to pay taxes, serve in the 
army, and shut their jaws'' (sic). 

GERMAN PRETENSIONS AND EXPANSION 

In the following extracts the reader may fol- 
low the various stages of that German expan- 
sion all over the globe. 

Schmoller, the political economist, writes: — 
^'We must at all costs hope for the formation 
in Southern Brazil, of a state with 20 or 30 
million Germans, and that this State should re- 
main an integral part of Brazil, whether it be 
constituted as an independent state, or whether 
it remain in close relation with the Empire." 
He quotes from Deutsches Handels Archiv, 
March, 1901, a report of the German Consul at 
Blumenau (Brazil) :—^* Of the 40,000 inhab- 
itants, about 30,000 are German Brazilians, 
8,000 are Austrians, and the residue is com- 
posed of Portuguese Brazilians." He quotes 
Dr. Hasse as saying: *^We shall see the Ger- 
man oak grow bigger, and from the German 
Emperor will spring the Emperor of the Ger- 
mans." Schmoller quotes also from Handels- 
museum, June 13, 1901: — *^ Little by little, 
slowly and surely, Germany is securing the 
trade of Bolivia. When she has done that en- 



GERMANY'S MADNESS 57 

tirely, she will have secured the plenitude of 
influence, a complete moral and material su- 
premacy, and a colony acquired without war 
or expense.'' 

The German military authorities add : — * ^ The 
German army and fleet must have at command 
a field where they can work homogeneously. 
If, as seems probable, the work of the army 
should be to the south and east of the Empire, 
it is almost indispensable that it should be sup- 
ported by the fleet in the Adriatic and the Med- 
iterranean. Our strategic front must extend 
from the Baltic to Trieste. France and Eussia 
have each a share in the maintenance of equi- 
librium in the seas of North Europe and of the 
Mediterranean Basin. We must have exactly 
the same. Besides, are the shores of the Upper 
Adriatic so far from German lands? There is 
little more than 100 kilometres as the crow flies 
from the Gulf of Trieste to the frontier of 
South Carinthia — a point from which, going 
northward and skirting Bohemia, there are 
nothing but compact masses of Germans to be 
found. On no account should this part of the 
coast be allowed to fall into Latin or Slav hands, 
for, if it were, that side of Germany is swamped 
for a century, maybe for ever." 



58 GERMANY'S MADNESS 

The Japanese talk hopefully of conquering 
the Dutch East Indies, which they consider an 
easy prey ; and the Germans, on their side, con- 
fidently remark that if the lesser Holland of 
Europe became a dependence of the Great Em- 
pire, the greater Holland of the Antipodes 
would become the finest of the German colonies. 

At Kiao-chau the Emperor William had given 
a first exhibition of his attitude towards China. 
Glorying in his strength, and impatient to 
parade it, looking on the Chinese as a ^* barbaric 
people, '^ he extolled the ^'mailed fisf and en- 
couraged it among his representatives. Baron 
Ketteler paid with his life for his imprudence 
and his provocations. Personally hit by the 
assassination of his minister, the Emperor 
seized the occasion to adopt a tragic attitude; 
in his imagination he saw himself a new Joshua, 
fighting with the people of God, against the 
Amalekites, and at the same time — with that 
curious mixture of practical common sense and 
romantic imagination which is one of the char- 
acteristic traits of his nature — started a diplo- 
matic campaign for the acceptance of a Ger- 
man field-marshal as head of the international 
army. 

In Western Asia the Germans pursue, and 



GERMANY'S MADNESS 59 

not unsuccessfully, a forward policy of con- 
stant infiltration. The following extracts are 
very instructive. 

Lt.-Col. Hildebrandt writes: *'Tlie Germans 
likewise have a great strategic interest in the 
Bagdad Railway ^ for in the contingent event of 
a blockade of the Suez Canal — a blockade which 
political complications, or, later on, military 
operations, might bring within the range of 
possibilities — this railway would supply Ger- 
many with the most direct road to the East of 
Africa and Asia and towards her transoceanic 
possessions." 

Siegmund Schneider writes in Die Deutsche 
Bagdadhahn: ^* Russia has, by the treaty of 
St. Petersburg of 1896, secured the right to send 
along the railway lines of Eastern China (cov- 
ering 1,500 kilometres of Chinese Manchuria) 
detachments of Siberian Cossacks to guard 
their line. In the same way it will be neces- 
sary, during the construction of the Bagdad 
Railway, that similar measures should be car- 
ried out to ensure the safety of the constructors 
and protect them from the attacks of Bedouins 
and brigands in Kurdistan, Mesopotamia, and 
Babylonia." 

Dr. Rohrbach writes in Die Bagdadhahn: 



60 aERMANY'S MADNESS 

*^A Turkey strong, militarily and politically, 
can alone enable ns to find in the lands of the 
Euphrates and the Tigris an increase of our na- 
tional possessions and an improvement in the 
economic scale. For a weak Turkey not a 
pfennig, but to a strong Turkey let us give all 
the money that may be required. * ' 

Dr. Paul Rohrbach writes in Lie Zeit: 
* * There can no longer be any doubt on the sub- 
ject. The Anatolia Railway Co., which is in 
the hands of the Deutsche Bank of Berlin, will 
have the financial and technical management of 
the undertaking. It may, therefore, be said 
that the Bagdad Railway is in reality a Ger- 
man enterprise, as we on our side desired it to 
be and strove to make it, whilst our adversaries 
on the other hand did their utmost to thwart 
it at Constantinople with so much jealousy and 
tenacity. ' ^ 

Lt.-Col. Hildebrandt, writing in the Interna- 
tionale Revue uher die gesammten Armeen und 
Flatten (p. 73, March, 1902), Witzleben, Dres- 
den, says: **The concession was granted at 
the end of 1899, and it may be taken that it was 
obtained thanks to the policy of the German 
Government, which has resolutely claimed for 
its country the position of a world-power in the 



GERMANY'S MADNESS 61 

concert of nations. The construction of the line 
is consequently in German hands ; and the same 
is the case with the huge maritime works which 
are being carried out by the Anatolia Company 
on a site which will furnish an excellent port, 
and in the Bay of Ismid, on the spot known as 
Haidar-Pasha, near Scutari, on the Bosphorus, 
opposite to Constantinople, of which it may be 
said to form a suburb.'' 

At the end of March, 1902, the following note 
appeared in the Turkish papers: — ''Up till to- 
day MM. Zander (representing the Deutsche 
Bank) and Huguenin have acted as managing 
directors of the Anatolia Eailway. Henceforth 
M. Zander will take up the title and duties of 
'Manager of the New Concession Lines,' and 
M. Huguenin remains manager of the Anatolia 
Company. ' ' 

In 1880 the trade of Germany with the Otto- 
man Empire amounted to 8,500,000 francs 
(£340,000) ; in 1900 it had increased to 81,250,- 
000 francs (£3,250,000) ; and in 1904 to 84,450,- 
000 francs (£3,378,000), having increased ten- 
fold in twenty years. 

This regular system of expansion is very 
considerable, aided by various societies whose 
only aim is the spread of the German language, 



62 GERMANY'S MADNESS 

of German commerce, and German ideas. 
Thus, the Allgemeiner Deutscher Sprachverein 
sends subsidies to the German schools scattered 
throughout the world, and especially to those 
in the Slav countries of Austria; the Society 
for the Propagation of the German Language 
(Deutscher Sprachverein) works in the same di- 
rection. The Deutsche Kolonial Gesellschaft 
encourages ideas of oversea expansion, whilst 
the Deutscher Flottenverein, with already close 
on 1,000,000 members, completes the work of 
converting public opinion to new sacrifices so 
as to have by 1915 a fleet strong enough to beat 
the British fleet. It is especially religious so- 
cieties that distinguish themselves by their zeal. 
The Odin-Verein of Munich, the Gustav-Adolf 
Verein have specially devoted themselves to 
the ^* evangelisation'' of Austria; the arrest of 
one of their missionaries, pastor Everling, 
caused some sensation at the time. The Evan- 
gelical League has conducted with great ardour 
the ^^Los von Rom^^ (''Away from Rome!") 
campaign, for w^hich in 1903 it had already dis- 
bursed 400,000 marks. All seem to fulfil a 
sacred function, the exaltation of the national 
name and greatness. "The king at the head 



GERMANY'S MADNESS 63 

of Prussia, Prussia at the lieacl of Germany, 
Germany at the head of the world." 

Such nations as the Germans cannot reason- 
ably hope to absorb, they unremittingly endeav- 
our to win over to their interests. Amongst 
these the Americans proper, the people of the 
United States, are the foremost. The Kaiser 
rarely misses an opportunity of ingratiating 
himself with the Yankees. He sent their uni- 
versities works of art; he introduced the flour- 
ishing system of a constant exchange of pro- 
fessors, so that American professors are giving 
temporarily lectures at Berlin, while German 
scholars go to the States to deliver discourses 
on German Science ; now, he is said to send one 
of his sons to Princeton University to be edu- 
cated in America; he has recently utilised the 
chance left him by the oversight of the British 
Government, and sent an official representative 
to the solemn opening of the Carnegie Insti- 
tute at Pittsburg. More than this is done by 
a host of German writers, who submit to the 
Americans tempting reflections such as the fol- 
lowing : — 

^^The apprehensions of the American people 
prevent the United States establishing compul- 



64 GERMANY'S MADNESS 

sory military service ; they can only rely, there- 
fore, on the development of their navy. The 
most rational solution for the United States is, 
therefore, to seek a ^rapprochement' with Ger- 
many. The strength of the combined fleets will 
soon exceed that of the British Navy. On the 
other hand, the magnificent German army would 
render possible widespreading transoceanic ex- 
peditions. . . . The similarity of character fa- 
vours a German- American alliance. Our sixty 
million citizens and the eighty million American 
are ever increasing and multiplying, and see 
their qualities improve, whereas the Latin races 
remain stationary or retrograde. Thus the 
Teutonic race, to which Americans belong as 
well as ourselves, could aspire to the domina- 
tion of the globe if the two nations walked to- 
gether instead of remaining isolated. Since 
1820 Germany has sent over ^ve million emi- 
grants to the United States, that is, 22 per 
cent, of the total immigration. No other coun- 
try has sent so large a contingent. At the last 
census (1900) the number of individuals set- 
tled in the United States born to two German 
parents or one was estimated at 7,800,000, and 
of this number over two and a half millions had 
been born in Germany.'* 



GERMANY'S MADNESS 65 

THE COMING STRUGGLE 

From the preceding extracts it will be seen 
that the Germans are now suffused with a pro- 
found and passionate belief in their great his- 
torical vocation. Again and again we beg to 
submit to the British reader that he must not 
take views and opinions such as have been here 
given in the way in which such things are taken 
by the nation of the United Kingdom. In Great 
Britain all sorts of views and intellectual or 
political opinions are constantly being pub- 
lished and discussed; yet, with the exception 
of a few faddists and eccentrics, nobody takes 
them over-seriously. At any rate, it may be 
stated with absolute correctness that very few 
people in this country are likely to labour any 
given political or economical theory to its log- 
ical extremes. 

The British nation has grappled with the 
realities of politics, party strifes, international 
policy, or ordinary wealth far too much to be 
addicted to mere theoretical pushing of ideas 
to their inferential fag ends. Hence the most 
extreme ideas in religion, philosophy, or poli- 
tics are, in Great Britain, less likely to be car- 
ried out in unmodified strict logic. Compro- 



66 GERMANY'S MADNESS 

mise and half-measure wisdom are the soul of 
this country. In Germany, on the other hand, 
imperial problems, for instance, are as yet 
purely theoretic. No Germans, if we except 
one or two generations of Germans, have ever 
had any practical acquaintance with imperial 
problems. They cannot, therefore, know how 
to fit ideas to reality, how to modify theory to 
practice. Under these circumstances, their 
theoretic bent has all but free scope. Where, 
in reality, there are a thousand difficulties, they 
see none. The whole matter of world-power 
appears to them in the light of a simple and 
clear problem. The opinions of their leaders 
are taken by the Germans quite literally, and 
the realisation of their unbounded ambition is, 
they hold, only a matter of a few sound laws 
and increased energy. 

All this only adds to the overweening conceit 
filling them. For, not only are they convinced 
that the world ought to be theirs, but also that 
this appropriation of the globe, and perhaps 
of a few other planets, is relatively a simple 
affair. They, therefore, do not hesitate to draw 
the logical conclusion from all that their lead- 
ers tell them. One has only to read the follow- 
ing speech by Gen. Von der Goltz : — 



I 



GERMANY'S MADNESS 67 

^'It is therefore necessary to convince our- 
selves, and to convince the generation we have 
to educate, that the time for rest has not yet 
arrived ; that the prediction of a supreme strug- 
gle, in which the existence and the power of 
Germany will be at stake, is by no means a 
vain chimera emanating from the imaginations 
of a few ambitious madmen ; that this supreme 
struggle will burst forth one day terrible and 
momentous as all struggles between nations 
that serve as a prelude to great political revo- 
lutions. ' ' 

Also, Gen. Bernhardi's speech to the Berlin 
Society, 23rd January, 1905: — '*In spite of 
treaties and peace congresses, it is still by steel 
that great questions are settled." 

''The English peril haunts Germany,'' writes 
M. Georges Villiers. ''By the force of things 
the 20th century will see the German and the 
Anglo-Saxon in a death struggle for maritime 
and commercial supremacy. At any rate, there 
is hardly a German who is not persuaded to- 
day that such will be the case. Those even who 
deny the possibility of such a conflict are not 
those whom it preoccupies least.'' 

And Prince Biilow, the German Chancellor, 
in a speech delivered in the Reichstag (Decem- 



68 GERMANY'S MADNESS 

ber Gth, 1897), said: — ^'The time has gone by 
when Germans left the earth to one of their 
neighbours and the sea to another, retaining 
for themselves the sky, where pure doctrine 
reigns. " 

As a corroboration of the statement here 
made with regard to the extraordinarily high- 
strung feeling of imperial expansion on the part 
of the Germans, we here add two remarks made 
by well-known men in the world of literature, 
one a French Catholic priest, the other a Rus- 
sian novelist. The Pere Didon, author of sev- 
eral famous w^orks on Jesus and the religious 
movement of our day, says: — 

^*She (Germany) lays claim to being mili- 
tarily, politically, scientifically, religiously, 
morally, and cerehrally the first nation in the 
world. Chauvinism in Germany is more than 
a sentiment; it is a theory, a dogma in a sci- 
entific dress. A distinction is made between 
the two races, the German and the Latin; the 
German, although only a newcomer on the scene 
where great events are enacted, being naturally 
placed first." 

The Russian novelist, Dostoi'ewski, writes : — 
^'Chauvinism, pride, and an unlimited confi- 
dence in their own strength have intoxicated the 



GERMANY'S MADNESS 69 

Germans since the war. This people, that has 
so rarely been a conqueror and has so often 
been conquered, had all of a sudden beaten the 
nation that had humiliated all the other na- 
tions. ... On the other hand, the fact that Ger- 
many, but yesterday all parcelled out, has been 
able in so short a time to develop so strong a 
political organisation, might well lead the Ger- 
mans to believe that they are about to enter on 
a new phase of brilliant development. This 
conviction has resulted in making the German 
not only Chauvinistic and conceited, but flighty 
as well; it is not only the Teutonic grocer and 
shoemaker now who are over-confident, but pro- 
fessors, eminent scientists, and even the min- 
isters themselves as well.'' 

No wonder that the arrogance of the ^* Elect 
Ones of God" come out at every possible and 
impossible occasion. When Bismarck was 
asked what he would do, should some 100,000 
British soldiers be landed on the north coast 
of Germany in case of a war between Great 
Britain, France and Germany, he replied: ^'I 
should have them arrested by the police." 



PART II 

In the preceding section of this work something 
was said about the notions of extreme national 
pride and jingoism with which a very great and 
exceedingly influential number of German writ- 
ers, thinkers, professors, statesmen, and jour- 
nalists have these twenty odd years filled the 
heads of the Germans. This by itself is, we 
venture to submit, a dangerous state of things, 
and we have repeatedly tried to explain to the 
reader how these fanatic articles, books, views, 
or utterances of German leading men must be 
taken at their full face value, and how absurd 
it would be to compare their effect upon the 
German nation with that of similar books in 
this country. 

Everybody has heard of the vast influence 
which, in the eighteenth century, was exercised 
by a handful of French writers about political 
economy and politics on the coming and on the 
character of the French Eevolution. One can- 
not, indeed, maintain that History is always 
governed by ideas, and thus by thinkers and 

70 



GERMANY'S MADNESS 71 

writers. But there are periods and conditions 
when such otherwise harmless multipliers of 
ink factories have a very serious influence upon 
their nation. 

In this chapter we are going to put before 
the reader the various circumstances which, 
independently of what German writers think 
or say, have powerfully contributed to swell 
the German head.^ 

Common sense — the least common of things, 
though the most necessary — will tell any man 
who gives his thoughts to matters of European 
history and politics that no single nation in 
Europe can be great or small but what the 
other nations contribute to it very consider- 
ably. A self-made nation does not exist any 
more than does, strictly speaking, a self-made 
man. Some other nation has invariably had 
a hand in it. So we note that Spanish great- 
ness was grafted and partly caused by the weak- 

1 Although Germany's struggle for supremacy has been pre- 
cipitated in a manner that Dr. Reich could not foresee, and 
some of his hypotheses and deductions are correspondingly 
irrelevant to the present European crisis, there is yet left in 
this and the succeeding section of his work much that is valu- 
able in the matters of information and criticism. We venture 
to think that these sections are still worthy of perusal, before 
the reader passes to the Epitome in which the case stated by 
Dr. Reich in his first section is manifestly confirmed. — Ed. 



72 GERMANY'S MADNESS 

ness of the then Germany and Italy. French 
greatness in the seventeenth century was based 
on the then weakness of Spain, Italy, Germany, 
and, periodically, of England, too. At present 
(1907) Germany's greatness, which is unde- 
niable, is based on the partial eclipse of France 
and Austria and on the absence of the spirit 
of Chatham in England. 

It is unnecessary to refer here to diplomatic 
and other incidents which have served to ob- 
scure the importance of France in comparison 
with Germany. We proceed to consider the 
position of Austria-Hungary. 

AUSTRIA-HUNGARY VASSAL OF GERMANY 

In the case of Austria-Hungary, things stand 
even much better for a mushroom-growth of 
the German swelled-head. There is, in fact, 
no exaggeration in saying that Austria-Hun- 
gary is, in international politics, the mere vassal 
of Germany. For over two centuries the rul- 
ers of Prussia were the humble subordinates 
of the Austrian Hapsburgs. When, at the be- 
ginning of the eighteenth century, the Electors 
of Brandenburg became Kings of Prussia, they 
became so by the grace of the Austrian rulers, 
who were the Emperors of the Holy Roman 



GERMANY'S MADNESS 73 

Empire. As late as 1850 the King of Prussia 
was slighted, not to say duped, by the ruler of 
Austria. Since 1866 this has been completely 
reversed. Not only was Austria signally de- 
feated by Prussia in that year; but when, in 
1870, Germany made war on France, and Aus- 
tria thereby had an excellent opportunity of 
squaring her count with Germany, the Aus- 
trians did not do so at all, and thus missed the 
greatest of their chances in modern history. 
Ever since, Austria-Hungary has been, in her 
own self-interest, bound to make friends with 
Germany, to abet and follow her, or to be, as 
was said above, her vassal. 

At the conference of Algeciras, for the settle- 
ment of the Moroccan Question, when all the 
other Powers sided with France and England, 
Austria-Hungary went, arm in arm, with Ger- 
many. Things have come to such a pass that 
Germany is at present the strongest guarantee 
for the maintenance of the dual empire called 
Austria-Hungary. The author, himself a Hun- 
garian, is well aware of the fact that nine per- 
sons out of ten in this country indulge in the 
belief that Austria-Hungary will, on the demise 
of Francis Joseph I., who is now (May, 1907) 
seventy-six years old, fall to pieces, and that 



74 GERMANY'S MADNESS 

the Germans will take up and assimilate as 
many of these pieces as they may oare to. 

This belief is, we venture to submit, totally 
erroneous. On the demise of her present aged 
ruler, Austria-Hungary will not fall to pieces 
at all. That dual empire is a peculiar product, 
the oddest of European history. It has no 
unity whatever, racial, national, religious, or 
geographical. It is, in one word, not a straight- 
forward, natural result of the energy and the 
opportunities of a people, such as is France, 
England, or Germany; it is a makeshift, a pis- 
aller, as the French call it ; a thing which is bad 
enough as it is, but the absence of which would 
be worse still. Old Palacky, the historian of 
the Bohemians or Czechs, rightly said that if 
Austria did not exist, it would be necessary to 
invent it. It is not a country, or a nation; it 
is a misfortune, but an inevitable one. This 
can be made clear very briefly. 

The Germans have had too many terrible dis- 
asters in the last three centuries ; they have, as 
was pointed out above, learned too many a 
wholesome lesson, to ignore what a blind man 
can see. We mean, they know that any attempt 
of theirs on a Continental country, unless really 



GERMANY'S MADNESS 75 

justified as an act of self-defence, would almost 
immediately call forth a coalition of most of 
tlie other Powers of Europe. Suppose, for in- 
stance, that Germany, out of sheer arrogance 
and greed, should invade Holland or Switzer- 
land. Nothing can be surer than that such an 
invasion would at once prevail upon the other 
Continental Powers to unite against Germany. 
If Germany should, instead of Holland or 
Switzerland, choose Austria as an object of 
appropriation, the balance of power would be 
thereby so gravely affected that Italy and 
France, let alone Hungary, Belgium, and Hol- 
land, would forthwith combine for the rehabili- 
tation of the European equilibrium. 

All this the Germans know full well. Their 
leaders, such as Professor Hans Delbriick, tell 
them so every day. They do not want to re- 
peat the fatal mistake of Napoleon. The great 
French Emperor was almost unceasingly mak- 
ing war on one Continental Power after the 
other, until finally all of them coalesced and 
combined against him, and so brought about 
his downfall. The Germans are quite aware 
that if, trusting in their superior military or- 
ganisation, they continue exasperating one Con- 



76 GERMANY'S MADNESS 

tinental nation after the other, those nations 
will without fail unite against them, and fight 
them until they meet their Waterloo. 

Quite apart from this danger of a European, 
at any rate a Continental, coalition against 
them, the more thoughtful of the Germans are 
not at all anxious to absorb recalcitrant nations 
on the Continent. Already the few million 
Poles cause them no end of trouble ; and if the 
Germans, by hypothesis, forced the Dutch, 
Swiss, let alone the Austrians, into the Ger- 
man Empire, their Imperial Parliament would 
become a real inferno^ or, in plain English, an 
ungovernable anarchy. Prince Biilow, the Ger- 
man Chancellor, has repeatedly declared that 
the Poles form the greatest danger to the Ger- 
man Empire. Now, fancy some nine million 
Catholic Austrians entering the German Em- 
pire, and thus, by their deputies, the German 
Imperial Parliament. The Catholic or Centre 
Party is already one of the most influential 
parties in the Reichstag at Berlin; if nine mil- 
lion more Catholics should be represented in 
it, the Catholics would swamp the German Par- 
liament. The Germans, mostly Protestant, can- 
not possibly desire that. Bismarck said more 



GERMANY'S MADNESS 77 

than once that he could not afford to absorb 
Austria, even if it were offered to him. 



All the foregoing reasons do not as yet give 
the complete statement with regard to Ger- 
many's unwillingness to seize on Austria. 
There is a still more powerful reason; one 
which at this stage of our little work we cannot 
discuss in full, but which may and must be 
touched upon. It is this: What Germany 
wants and desires is not continental expansion, 
but maritime expansion. In seizing part of 
Austria, the Germans would, to put it in simple 
language, only catch a Tartar. The gain is 
doubtful, the advantage far from certain. To 
expand on sea, on the other hand, would give 
the Germans unbounded facilities for their 
ever-growing surplus population, and for their 
international trade. If we suppose that Ger- 
many is offered the choice between say, Switzer- 
land and South Africa ; there is no doubt what- 
ever that the Germans would select the latter. 
In the same way, Asia-Minor has immense at- 
tractions for them; and the Dutch islands in 
the East Indies are an object fervently desired 



78 GERMANY ^S MADNESS 

by Germany. All this transmarine expansion, 
however, means sea-power; in fact, supremacy 
on the sea. This supremacy, again, means a 
victorious war with Great Britain. 

This, then, is the real, the true, the only ob- 
jective of German *^ world-policy.'^ If Great 
Britain yielded to them, by force of course, her 
supremacy on sea, the Germans would not trou- 
ble much longer about being aggressive on the 
Continent. It would not pay them. To wrest 
the naval supremacy from Britain is a matter 
of war, but of a war incomparably shorter and 
less costly than a war with a continental coali- 
tion. It is well known that naval campaigns 
may be decided in an exceedingly short time, 
in a week or two. One signal victory, and the 
campaign is decided. Such a rapid solution of 
the problem cannot be so much as dreamed of 
on the Continent. On the other hand, neither 
Britain nor Germany can seriously hope to be 
joined, in a naval war, by a coalition proper. 
No more disastrous mistake can be made than 
to believe that Britain will eventually be helped 
by France, that is, by the French fleet. It will 
not, unless a very profound and improbable 
change comes over the whole mind of the French 
nation. 



GERMANY'S MADNESS 79 

The Germans would therefore have to face 
the British fleet alone. This is undoubtedly a 
considerable venture. Yet it cannot be com- 
pared with the venture of facing a Continental 
coalition against the German army. If the 
British nation had attacked Germany a few 
years ago, say at the time of the Kaiser's tele- 
gram to Krtiger, the ambition of the Germans 
with regard to maritime expansion would have 
been nipped in the bud. At that time the dis- 
proportion between the British and the Ger- 
man fleets was too much in favour of the former. 
In a few years' time, however, this dispropor- 
tion will be very much toned down. Unless 
one believes in the absolute and unconditional 
invincibility of the British fleet as in a sort of 
law of nature, one is not entitled to assume that 
the German fleet cannot ever defeat it. Such 
statements may do in public gatherings crowned 
by a wildly jingoistic gallery. They cannot be 
taken seriously in a study of Britain's future. 
At any rate, it remains true that the Germans 
are entitled to think that it is much easier and 
more profitable to make good their desire for 
maritime expansion than to realise any hope 
of absorbing the Continent against a coalition 
of Powers. In the former case they would have 



80 GERMANY'S MADNESS 

to fight only one, if a very great, Power; in 
the latter they would be attacked by at least 
ten Powers. 

Given all these undeniable circumstances, no 
sane person will lightly attribute to the Ger- 
mans an idea of beginning their expansion by 
an attack on a great and hitherto friendly Con- 
tinental Power, such as Austria-Hungary. 
Quite on the contrary : Since the Germans are 
fully aware of the folly of rousing against 
themselves, unnecessarily, some 150,000,000 
continentals; since, moreover, transmarine ex- 
pansion is for them by far the more profitable 
expansion of the two, and by far the more feasi- 
ble, the Germans will, there is not a shadow of a 
doubt, take great care to avoid any complica- 
tions on the Continent. They will do every- 
thing in their power to maintain the chief Con- 
tinental State in the centre of Europe, that is, 
Austria-Hungary. 

That legend of the disruption and collapse 
of Austria-Hungary after the death of the pres- 
ent ruler is only a thought whose parent is the 
wish of the, alas! but too numerous, peace-at- 
any-pricers of this country. In their humanity 
they wish the Germans to ravage, occupy, and 
swallow Austria-Hungary, instead of attacking 



GERMANY'S MADNESS 81 

the British fleet. Such an Austrian diversion, 
those goody-goody ones think in the inmost 
recesses of their hearts, wonld keep the obnox- 
ious Teuton from the shores of this country. 
So it would, but the Germans are not kind 
enough to be made the cat's-paw of Exeter 
Hall, and of the members of the Society for 
the Prevention of Cruelty to Cats. 

It has so far been shown that the extraordi- 
nary self-assurance of the Germans is partly 
based on the eclipse of France and of Austria- 
Hungary. We shall now see that Eussia, too, 
by her complete defeat at the hands of the 
Japanese and by the ensuing anarchy within 
her empire, has for the time being ceased to 
have any serious influence on European mat- 
ters. If one considers that it was the German 
Kaiser who, practically the first, in a now fa- 
mous painting of his, foreshadowed the ^'Yel- 
low Peril," and that this very ^^ Yellow Peril" 
was the cause of the downfall of Russia, and 
thus of the unprecedented ascendency of Ger- 
many, one cannot but be amazed at the strange 
and contradictory effects of political events. 
Russia is not only the immediate neighbour of 
Germany; there is also practically no natural 
barrier of any serious kind between the two 



82 GERMANY'S MADNESS 

countries. This has always rendered Germany 
very apprehensive of danger on the Eastern 
or Russian side of her empire. It has repeat- 
edly prevailed upon German rulers to go warily 
and with even exaggerated caution. It has, un- 
der all circumstances, poured water into the 
German wine, as the French say. They could 
not think of sounding high trumpet-tones in 
handling international affairs. The Russian 
Bear was there. But now (1907) he is no 
longer there. He has withdrawn into his ob- 
scure lair, there to lick his own wounds, a-grum- 
bling and a-moaning. 

THE POSITION IN 1907 

If, then, we twine up all the threads of Eu- 
ropean politics into one big rope of inference, 
it comes to this : In all Europe there is at pres- 
ent no longer a concert of six great Powers, but 
only a duo of two Powers: Germany and 
Great Britain. The rest of the Powers are 
what in music we call ripieni, i.e., merely fill- 
ing out the chords and harmonies. This state 
of minored prestige Germany has a capital 
interest to maintain in Europe. If the polit- 
ically anaemic Powers should coalesce and unite 
against Germany, they might become most dan- 



GERMANY'S MADNESS 83 

gerous to Germany. Hence the whole of Ger- 
man policy is directed to one single object: to 
keep the former great Powers as bloodless as 
possible, to anaemiate without unduly exasper- 
ating them. This done, there remains for the 
Germans one single great duel, that with Great 
Britain. This, they hope they will be able to 
manage. 

The reader has undoubtedly noticed, from 
time to time, the progress in building men-of- 
war that has, in the course of the last ten years, 
been made in Germany. The daily papers 
bring such reports from authentic sources, and 
here and there a more thoughtful Englishman 
has collected them for future reference. The 
mass of this nation, we are afraid, has treated 
these most serious matters with the usual lev- 
ity. It is, therefore, necessary to collect here 
the latest and most authentic data about the 
startling progress of the German fighting navy, 
in order to impress the British reader with the 
fact above insisted upon, to wit, that the Ger- 
mans do prepare for a possible encounter with 
Great Britain. Their navy can have only one 
meaning: England, or, to speak with due re- 
gard to Scots and Irish, let alone Welsh sus- 
ceptibilities. Great Britain. Neither Russia 



84 GERMANY ^S MADNESS 

nor Denmark, Norway or Sweden are threaten- 
ing the German coast. The colonies of the 
Germans are primitive; and their trade does 
not as yet require a navy as vast as the one 
they are building. Now, as to the facts of their 
men-of-war, built and building: 

During 1906 the German navy was increased 
by fifteen new warships, all of which were built 
in German shipbuilding yards, and represent a 
total displacement of 62,582 tons. Only three 
of these warships were built in the Government 
yards, and it speaks volumes for the gradual 
development of shipbuilding in Germany that 
the remaining twelve units were turned out by 
private yards. These fifteen units were made 
up of two squadron-battleships, two armoured- 
cruisers, two small cruisers, one mine-laying 
vessel, one ship for hydrographical purposes, 
one tender, six torpedo-boats, and one subma- 
rine; one of the torpedo-boats has not been 
launched yet. The battleships were the Schle- 
sien, launched at Danzig in May, and the 
Schleswig-Holstein, launched in December at 
Gaarden, near Kiel ; each is of 13,200 tons, and 
they are the last of the five vessels of the 
Deutschland type. With these two, the German 
navy has now twenty-four big battleships. 



ii 



GERMANY'S MADNESS 85 

The armoured cruisers are the Scharnhorst, 
launched at Hamburg in March, and the Gneise- 
naUy launched in June at Gropelingen, on the 
Weser; each is of 11,500 tons displacement. 
The small cruiser Nurnberg was launched at 
Kiel in August, and the Stuttgart at Danzig 
in September. The Nautilus y Germany's first 
mine-layer, of 2,000 tons, was launched on the 
Weser in August; the tender Delphin, of 445 
tons, was launched at Kiel in January. One 
division of torpedo-boats was launched at Kiel ; 
the last of these boats, G 137, fitted with the 
Parsons turbines, and of 572 tons could not be 
launched in December, nor has the date yet 
been fixed. Finally, last August, the U 1, the 
first submarine boat owned by Germany, was 
launched from the Krupp Germania yard at 
Gaarden; it is of 180 tons. 

In an appendix to Count Reventlow's book, 
^^Weltfrieden oder Weltkrieg'^ (World-peace or 
World-war) f 1907, the well-known German 
writer on naval subjects gives an interesting 
account of his correspondence with six of the 
most important private shipbuilding yards in 
Germany with regard to their resources for the 
construction of battleships and cruisers of the 
largest type. Krupp 's Germania yards at Kiel 



86 GERM ANY 'S MADNESS 

replied that they were perfectly capable of com- 
pleting a large battleship or cruiser within a 
period of twenty-four to thirty months, and that 
the seven slip-ways at their disposal would en- 
able them to lay down at least two of these 
vessels every year. The Howaldts works, also 
of Kiel, returned a similar reply, and guaran- 
teed to deliver one large battleship or cruiser 
every year after the first two years. The me- 
chanical appliances available at Kiel were of 
the most modern type, and skilled labour was 
plentiful. The Vulkan yards at Stettin stated 
that they could lay down two battleships of 
18,000 tons each and two cruisers of 15,000 tons 
every year. If the guns and armour were 
promptly delivered by the makers, they too 
would be able to complete the ships within 
twenty-four to thirty months. When the Vul- 
kan ^s new yards at Hamburg had been opened 
their productive capacity would be increased 
50 to 75 per cent. The firm of Blohm and Voss 
estimated that they could lay down two large 
ships, either battleships or cruisers, every year, 
and that they could deliver them within two 
or two and a half years if a continuous succes- 
sion of orders were assured. Herr Schichau, 
of Schichau *s works at Danzig and Elbing, re- 



GERMANY'S MADNESS 87 

plied tliat, if necessary, lie could *^ comfort- 
ably'' accommodate four battlesliips of 18,000 
tons each upon the stocks, and could also at 
the same time carry on the work of fitting out 
two or three more similar vessels. Herr 
Schichau informed Count Reventlow that he 
had already completed a battleship in thirty 
months, but that in general he would prefer to 
receive a fresh order every half-year rather 
than reduce the present building period of 
thirty to thirty-six months, which was quite 
short enough. The Weser Shipbuilding Com- 
pany drew attention to its new yards, and 
pledged its ability to lay down two battleships 
and two cruisers simultaneously, and to com- 
plete them within a period of twenty-four to 
thirty months. In addition to these private 
yards, Germany possesses all the resources of 
the Imperial navy yards at Kiel and Wilhelms- 
haven. 

The extent of dock accommodation for large 
ships available in German ports is described 
as being ample, so that from this point of view 
there is no reason why the rate of construction 
for the German navy should not be accelerated. 
There are four floating docks, including one 
with a capacity of 35,000 tons, at Hamburg, one 



88 GEEMANY'S MADNESS 

at Bremen, and one at Stettin, all of which are 
in private hands, while the naval authorities 
have two dry docks at Kiel and four at Wil- 
helmshaven, two of which are still under con- 
struction. The State of Bremen also owns a 
dry dock at Bremerhaven, which is rented by 
the North-German Lloyd, and, if necessary, the 
locks of the Kiel Canal could be utilised for 
docking large ships, especially when the new 
and larger locks which are projected have been 
built. 

Furthermore, we read the following telling 
facts in April, 1906: — 

The action of the German Admiralty in plac- 
ing with extreme promptitude the orders for 
the two new battleships to be laid down under 
the German programme of 1907 has come as 
something of a surprise to the British naval 
authorities. The large armoured ships to be 
laid down for the German Navy this year are 
three in number. Two of them are described 
as battleships and the other is known as an 
armoured cruiser. All three are larger than 
any vessels yet built or designed for the British 
Navy. The two battleships will displace 19,- 
000 metric tons, or 18,000 British tons, apiece, 
800 tons larger than the Dreadnought. It is 



GERMANY'S MADNESS 89 

understood that they will be laid down in the 
next few weeks. Their armament is reported 
to be fourteen or sixteen 11-in. guns of fifty 
calibres, so mounted that they will bring to 
bear a broadside superior to that of the Dread- 
nought. They will, it is believed, have turbine 
engines, though, since great secrecy has been 
maintained as to their details, nothing is cer- 
tainly known. Their speed will probably be 
about the same as that of the Dreadnought. 
They will be completed in the summer of 1910. 

The new German armoured cruiser will dis- 
place about 19,200 tons, and will therefore be 
2,000 tons larger than the British ships of the 
Invincible class. It is known that she will have 
turbine engines and that a speed of over 
twenty-five knots is expected from her. Her 
armament is believed to consist of ten 11-in. 
guns mounted in the centre line, so that all can 
fire on either broadside, but some accounts rep- 
resent it as being even more powerful. Like 
the British Invincibles, she will be capable of 
destroying any battleship of the pre-Dread- 
nought era. 

In all, this summer (1907) Germany will 
have six monster ships building for her Navy. 
These are made up thus : Two battleships, be- 



90 GEEMANY'S MADNESS 

lieved to be of over 18,000 tons, voted in 1906; 
one armoured cruiser of 16,000 tons, voted in 
1906; two battleships of 18,700 tons, voted in 
1907; one armoured cruiser of 19,200 tons, 
voted in 1907. 

England bas seven monster ships building or 
complete : the Dreadnought, voted in 1905, com- 
plete; the three 17,200-ton armoured cruisers 
of the Invincible class, voted in 1905, complet- 
ing; and three battleships of the Superb class, 
and 18,600 tons, voted in 1906, building. In 
addition, two battleships are to be voted under 
the estimates of the present year, and a third 
may be laid down if the Hague Conference fails 
to secure disarmament. But these last ves- 
sels will not be laid down till the beginning of 
1908. 

Thanks to the enterprise of the London 
Daily Express (see an article in that paper of 
April 4th, 1907), we now know that the German 
Admiralty has decided to turn the port of Em- 
den, at the mouth of the river Ems, into a first- 
class torpedo base. This decision is Ger- 
many's reply to the formation of the British 
Home Fleet and the creation of a new flotilla 
of torpedo-boat destroyers at Dover. Emden is 
the nearest German harbour to the English 



GERMANY'S MADNESS 91 

coast, and is some fifty miles nearer to Sheer- 
ness than Wilhelmshaven, which has hitherto 
been the most westerly of Germany's naval 
ports. It will be remembered that Emden is the 
port which is always chosen by novelists and 
story writers as the point at which the German 
army is embarked for the invasion of England. 
Embarkation wharves extend for over a mile 
along the right bank of the Ems, bnt apart from 
this the place is not very well adapted for the 
purpose usually allotted to it. The fortifica- 
tions are very feeble, and there are only a few 
troops quartered there, while for many miles 
the line of railway leading up from the military 
centres is a single one. 

These difficulties, however, could easily be 
surmounted, and they do not in the least affect 
the decision of the German Government. The 
principal German naval base in the North Sea 
is Wilhelmshaven, and this is connected with 
Emden by the Ems-Jahde Canal, about forty 
miles in length, which is deep enough to allow 
of the passage of small torpedo craft. By us- 
ing this canal, whatever force of torpedo-boats 
is at Wilhelmshaven can reach Emden without 
touching the sea at all, and it is stated that it 
is extremely unlikely that a force of boats will 



92 GERMANY ^S MADNESS 

be permanently maintained at Emden. The 
only craft to be there permanently will be the 
necessary *^ mother ships. '^ There is no doubt, 
however, that the new base will provide a use- 
ful and dangerous striking point for Germany 
should she ever come into conflict with Great 
Britain. 

The Express naval correspondent at Sheer- 
ness had an interview with an officer of the 
Home Fleet at that port. **I am greatly sur- 
prised,'* he said, *Hhat the move has not been 
made before. Emden will certainly be of much 
more use to Germany as a torpedo base than as 
a possible jumping off place for an invasion 
which in all probability they would never risk. 
It brings their torpedo craft within eight hours 
of the English coasf 

**Do you think the British Admiralty will 
have to make any answer to this stepf the 
officer was asked. 

^'With the flotillas of destroyers now based 
here and at Dover,'' he replied, ^^we ought to 
be safe enough; but, in my opinion, the Sheer- 
ness flotilla spends far too much of its time in 
the Channel and in the North of Scotland. 
They call it the Nore flotilla, and it ought to be 
the Nore flotilla, and nothing else. The divi- 



GERMANY'S MADNESS 93 

sions at Sheerness and Dover should spend 
most of their time cruising about otf the mouth 
of the Thames. The Home Fleet will be a fine 
bait for these Emden torpedo craft, and we 
cannot afford to run any risks of a surprise.'* 

Another officer whose opinion was asked 
said: — **We cannot overrate the efficiency of 
German torpedo vessels. If Emden is going 
to be a torpedo base there ought to be at least 
thirty-six destroyers at Sheerness, and twelve 
continually at sea to prevent a surprise.'' 

Later reports brought the following informa- 
tion: — Between that port and Wilhelmshaven 
runs the Ems-Jahde Canal, and whatever ves- 
sels of the size of German destroyers may be 
at the dockyard port can reach Emden in less 
than two hours, without touching the open sea 
at all. The torpedo branch of the German 
navy is the most efficient department of a very 
efficient fleet. The men who man the craft are 
all expert in their work, for they are entered 
into the torpedo schools on joining the navy, 
and never leave that branch until they quit the 
service for good. The crews frequently re- 
ceive lectures on the defences of British naval 
bases. The full strength of the German navy 
in torpedo-boat destroyers is seventy-one, and 



94 GERMANY'S MADNESS 

as each ship is replaced as soon as it reaches 
the age of ten years, they are in all respects 
up to date. In the British Navy there are still 
to be found several destroyers twelve, thirteen, 
and even fourteen years old. 

At present the German vessels, of which 
forty-three are in full commission, are divided 
between Wilhelmshaven, Cuxhaven (both North 
Sea ports), and Kiel, and, as it is very improb- 
able that any of those now in commission will 
be reduced to the sham British standard of 
*^ nucleus crews," the end of this year, when 
the new harbour is completed, will see at least 
forty modern and efficient German destroyers 
within eight or nine hours' steaming distance 
of the English coast. 

As a protection against the possible attacks 
of such a force. Great Britain maintains in the 
North Sea only twenty-four fully-commis- 
sioned destroyers, of which at the present five 
are laid up for repair. Even when all of them 
are fit for sea, they are frequently hundreds 
of miles away in the English Channel or the 
north of Scotland. Behind these ready-for- 
war craft a considerable force of torpedo ves- 
sels is attached to the Nore Division of the 
Home Fleet, but, as they are manned on the 



GERMANY ^S MADNESS 95 

pernicious nucleus crew system, they are prac- 
tically negligible for immediate fighting pur- 
poses. Besides, they are all assembled for ex- 
ercises at Torbay, 340 miles from the North 
Sea. The recent developments in German 
naval organisation have no other object but to 
threaten Great Britain's supremacy in those 
waters which the creation of the Home Fleet 
was intended to assert. That fleet came into 
official existence on New Year's Day. So far, 
its ready-for-war strength in the North Sea is 
represented by two battleships to Germany's 
sixteen. The Fifth Cruiser Squadron is still 
existent only on paper. 

In March, 1907, the Rheinisch Westfaelische 
Zeitung, published at Essen, gave prominence 
to a telegram from Berlin announcing on in- 
formation derived from the best source that the 
naval administration intends to purchase the 
whole of the ^^Oberland" of Heligoland with 
the object of fortifying the entire island. 
Several tracts have already been bought, and 
the garrison is now being reinforced by 420 
men. It is proposed to turn the North Harbour 
into a torpedo harbour for the active fleet, and 
the harbour will be developed on a correspond- 
ingly large scale. The telegram continues: — 



96 GERMANY'S MADNESS 

^'The present fortifications are a half -measure, 
for they are unable to offer any effective re- 
sistance to the heavy turret guns of hostile war- 
ships, whose range, too, would out-distance the 
batteries of the island. The German people 
will understand why the plan has now assumed 
definite shape and development. Heligoland 
would be a plain hint to the Western Powers 
and an unmistakable reply to their recent 
machinations. Great Britain has ostenta- 
tiously increased her Home Fleet, and the new 
war harbour at Devonport is a fresh link in 
the chain of measures which stand in direct 
antithesis to the disarmament proposals which 
Great Britain is with suspicious zeal espousing. 
Let us make Heligoland a German Cronstadt 
which, covering the mouths of the Weser and 
Elbe and the Kiel Canal, together with the 
coastal defences on the mainland, will form a 
base within whose sphere an enemy will not 
lightly dare to intrude." 

The Berliner Neueste Nachrichten states that 
it is only contemplated to improve the fortifi- 
cations at a cost of £60,000. The German 
active battle fleet, or North Sea Squadron, con- 
sisted, middle of May, 1907, of the sixteen most 
up-to-date vessels in the Imperial Navy, with 



GEEMANY'S MADNESS 97 

two others in reserve at Wilhelmshaven. It 
lias now been decided to add two battleships 
to the active fleet and two to the reserve, bring- 
ing the total up to twenty-two. 

The numerical inferiority of the British 
Fleet in home waters, to which attention has 
so often been called of late, will be greatly in- 
creased by this augmentation of the German 
fleet in service. The British Channel Fleet, 
which covers the North Sea, contains fourteen 
battleships in full commission; Germany will 
shortly have eighteen in the same waters. In 
the Home Fleet at the Nore there are six more 
battleships, but these, as was admitted in the 
House of Lords, are largely manned with un- 
trained crews, and cannot be regarded as in- 
stantly ready for war. The British total is 
therefore twenty to the German twenty-two, 
the percentage ready for immediate hostilities 
being respectively 70 and 82. In addition, the 
German torpedo flotilla is much stronger than 
the British, and, unlike it, is always in the 
North Sea and ready for instant service. 

This change is typical of what has been going 
on for the past three years (1904-1907). 
While the British Naval Estimates have been 
reduced by six millions sterling, the German 



98 GERMANY'S MADNESS 

have increased by three millions. While Brit- 
ish arsenals and dockyards are being reduced 
and neglected, those of Germany are being 
rapidly developed. It is only a continuity of 
policy on both sides that has led to the reduc- 
tion of the number of British ships in full com- 
mission and an increase in the German. 

GERMAN NAVY LEAGUE 

In many ways even more important than all 
that has been done by the Germans in the mat- 
ter of ship-building for purposes of war, is the 
constantly growing intense interest of the Ger- 
man nation in those naval preparations. The 
German Navy League is well known as the 
mouthpiece of the German Government. Here 
are a few facts about the activity of that 
League, brought down to May, 1907: — 

During the last year the membership of the 
League increased from 865,000 to 906,000, 
whereas the British Navy League only numbers 
about 20,000 members. 

The Navy League of German Women works 
in co-operation with the Navy League itself, 
and numbers many thousands of enthusiastic 
women friends of maritime expansion. Dur- 
ing the last twelve months nearly 2,000 public 



GERMANY'S MADNESS 99 

meetings were held under tlie auspices of the 
League. Six hundred thousand copies of a 
naval handbook were sold at cost price, and 
500,000 copies of a pamphlet on ''Germany's 
Naval Power'' were supplied to the branches 
for distribution. The lectures and meetings 
were supplemented by biograph productions 
showing pictures of the fleet at sea and other 
phases of naval life. One of the most impor- 
tant features of the work of the League was the 
propaganda conducted among school teachers 
and schoolboys at State schools. Many thou- 
sands of pamphlets and leaflets were distrib- 
uted to teachers, who also received from the 
League's officials much general information 
about the navy, in writing. 

Three hundred teachers from inland towns 
were conducted on a four days' excursion to 
Hamburg and Kiel, at the expense of the 
League, to enable them to see the importance 
of Germany's mercantile interests and the size 
of the fleet with their own eyes. Several ex- 
cursions of schoolboys to Kiel were also ar- 
ranged at the expense of the League, which 
thus enabled between 2,000 and 3,000 German 
lads to obtain a personal interest in the Kai- 
ser's fleet. Special railway excursions were 



100 GERMANY'S MADNESS 

also run from many inland places to Kiel at 
low prices, to enable Germans in general to 
view the fleet. The monthly paper issued by 
the League has a circulation of 355,000. These 
particulars prove clearly enough that great 
popular interest and enthusiasm exist in Ger- 
many in regard to the navy. 

Count von Reventlow, the well-known Ger- 
man naval expert, has given the Daily MaiVs 
Berlin correspondent a statement of the rea- 
sons why limitation of naval armaments is re- 
jected by the Kaiser's Government. He pro- 
posed as an inscription over the Conference 
Hall at the Hague, ^'Si vis bellum, para pacem" 
(^^If you wish for war, prepare for peace"). 

Count von Reventlow argues that Germany 
must follow England's principle of maintaining 
a fleet able not only to guard her coasts, but to 
maintain unimpaired the over-sea communica- 
tions vital to her existence. ''In this region 
of national defence England has been the 
world's schoolmaster. We in Germany con- 
fess ourselves without exception believers in 
the English doctrine, for the soundness of 
which English history furnishes such brilliant 
confirmation. How far our teacher interprets 
the meaning of 'coast-defence' is apparent from 



GERMANY'S MADNESS 101 

her old strategic principle that in war one's 
own lines of defence must be laid on the 
enemy's shores. 

^*It lies, indeed, in the incompleteness of hu- 
man nature that Christian altruism has not yet 
become the common possession of the nations. 
So must we Germans acknowledge that we still 
possess enough wicked egoism to defend our 
property to the maximum of our strength. As 
yet, Germany is far from having reached this 
point. 

^^It is obvious that many Englishmen should 
wish to see the cost of their Navy reduced. 
But here again Germans are so devoid of al- 
truism that they cannot set the desires of Eng- 
lish taxpayers above German life interests. I 
can only repeat my former proposal that Eng- 
land slacken her armaments until the comple- 
tion of the German naval programme in 1920, 
when both fleets will be about equally strong. 
Then will the millennium be at hand, and tax- 
payers can sacrifice a cock to ^sculapius." 

GERMANY IN THE MIDDLE EAST 

The attentive reader of the preceding state- 
ments of fact cannot possibly think that Ger- 
man enterprise for purposes of greater na- 



102 GERMANY'S MADNESS 

tional expansion is nothing more than a pious 
wish of a few professors or other academic 
people. This enterprise is distinctly imperial- 
ist ; it is consciously the set resolution of a great 
nation to assert their place of prominence in 
the supreme council of nations. One has only 
to read what the Germans have recently com- 
menced doing in far-off Persia, to get a very 
clear idea of their determined bid for imperial 
power of the first magnitude. In a valuable 
and authentic report published in the London 
Daily Express, of April 3, 1907, we read as 
follows : 

^'Germany, in need of new fields of expan- 
sion, has marked down Persia as a favourable 
country for exploitation, and elaborate plans 
have been worked out for the promotion of 
German commercial interests and the extension 
of German enterprise in the Shah's dominions. 

^^ These plans are to be carried out by Ger- 
man capitalists supported by the German Gov- 
ernment, in spite of the fact that every step 
forward contemplated by the Germans involves 
an invasion of the recognised sphere of British 
influence and an attack on British interests in 
Persia. German enterprise in Persia thus 
promises to bring about a critical situation in 



GERMANY'S MADNESS 103 

the Middle East, besides increasing the tension 
between Great Britain and Germany already 
existing in Europe. 

*' Germany's schemes for exploiting Persia 
are so menacing to British interests that they 
merit serious attention on the part of His Maj- 
esty's Government. 

*^ Hitherto Great Britain and Russia have 
been the only Powers with extensive influence 
at Teheran. North Persia has been recognised 
as the Russian sphere of influence, and South 
Persia as the British. The Anglo-Russian 
agreement, now practically concluded, provides 
for the removal of future causes of rivalry in 
Persia. 

*^This arrangement between Great Britain 
and Russia is extremely distasteful to Ger- 
many, who desires to further her own ends in 
Persia. It is significant, however, that the 
commercial development now beginning is to 
be confined to South Persia, and carefully ex- 
cluded from North Persia. 

* ^ In plain words, this means that the German 
Government is willing to patronise an invasion 
by German merchants of the British sphere of 
influence, while carefully avoiding any action 
that could give offence to Russia. German 



104 GERMANY'S MADNESS 

protestations of friendship for England cannot 
conceal the fact that the scheme now begun in 
Persia with the consent and knowledge of the 
German Government is an effort to gain a 
footing in a country adjacent to Britain's In- 
dian Empire. 

^^The German Orient Bank was founded 
more than a year ago to promote profitable en- 
terprises in Eastern countries. Its own capital 
amounts to £800,000, and its founders and 
backers are three of the most powerful insti- 
tutions in Germany — the Dresdner Bank, the 
National Bank of Germany, and the Schaffhau- 
sen Banking Association. One of its directors, 
Herr Gutmann, junior, is now at Teheran to 
begin practical business operations in Per- 
sia. 

*^The plan of campaign has been carefully 
worked out, and begins with the establishment 
of a German bank at Teheran to compete with 
the British and Russian banks already there. 
The main object of this bank will be to secure 
concessions. 

**The German Orient Bank will also try to 
establish a great commercial centre at the most 
favourable port on the Persian Gulf, obtain- 



GEEMANY'S MADNESS 105 

ing a concession of territory as the site of the 
necessary buildings. This would be the head- 
quarters of a new German line of coasting 
steamships to distribute to all the Persian ports 
the German exports brought to the chosen com- 
mercial centre by the Hamburg- America and 
other German lines. 

^'The steamships of the Hamburg- America 
Company now plying in the Persian Gulf 
undercut their British competitors by charging 
85. a ton of freight as compared with 125. a 
ton rate of the British ships, and it is expected 
that a continuation of this policy will drive the 
British flag out of the Gulf. 

^'An audacious scheme of railway construc- 
tion, seriously encroaching on British rights, 
completes the project of the German Orient 
Bank. It is stated that one of these projected 
German railways, running from Teheran to 
Bagdad, would earn profits simply by convey- 
ing the corpses of pious Persians to two holy 
places southward of Bagdad, where the Persian 
Moslems desire to be buried. Another pro- 
jected railway, running from Bagdad eastward 
and then southward to the new German com- 
mercial centre on the Persian Gulf, would 



106 GERMANY'S MADNESS 

provide the urgently needed terminus for the 
Bagdad Railway. 

^'The German Government recently ap- 
pointed a new Minister to Teheran, Herr Stem- 
rich, an expert in Oriental affairs, to promote 
German commercial interests in Persia. One 
of Herr Stemrich's first acts was to recommend 
an immediate extension of German enterprise. ' ' 

COMMERCIAL. ENTEEPEISE AND PROSPERITY 

What makes all these far-reaching plans and 
preparations even more menacing, at any rate 
more important than they are at present, is 
this: that Germany, at home, is making such 
rapid strides towards an unprecedented prog- 
ress of her national wealth and prosperity, that 
her oversea enterprises will, without doubt, 
easily find their necessary financial backing by 
capital in Germany. For this purpose, one has 
only to read the report of Mr. Consul H. Har- 
ris-Gastrell on the trade of the Kingdom of 
Wurtemberg, one of the South-German States, 
issued in 1907. In that country practically 
every industry is reported to be in a highly 
flourishing condition. Orders are pouring in, 
capital is doubling with unparalleled rapidity, 
wages are rising, and there is an extraordinary 



GEKMANY'S MADNESS 107 

demand for labour. The British Consul 
says : — 

''The general economic improvement in Ger- 
many . . . has continued steadily, and in the 
latter of the two years under review (1905- 
1906) attained a hitherto unprecedented 
height. 

''There are no signs as yet of high-water 
mark having been reached, most manufacturers 
having orders for months in advance. 

"The home labour supply has proved inade- 
quate to meet the increased demands, and in 
some trades a considerable number of foreign 
workmen have been obtained. 

"This scarcity of labour has resulted in a 
very general increase of wages, which in many 
industries amounts to more than a 10 per cent, 
rise, and also in many cases a shortening of the 
working day.'' 

It is stated that the coal consumption of the 
German Empire has risen from 166,200,000 tons 
in 1904 to 195,000,000 tons in the first eleven 
months of 1906. Goods traffic on the railways 
on 1906 was double that of 1905. 

The following table shows the amazing 
growth of German imports and exports during 
the past twelve years: — 



108 GERMANY'S MADNESS 

IMPORTS 

1894 £206,000,000 

1906 £392,000,000 



EXPORTS 

1894 .. .. .., £166,000,000 

1906 £306,000,000 

An increase of nearly 100 per cent, in twelve 
years. 

In most trades the only subject of complaint 
is the scarcity of workmen. The following are 
typical extracts: — 

Machinery. — Employers complain of the dif- 
ficulty of securing skilled technical labour. 

Motor Industry. — The demand (in 1905-6) 
far exceeded the output. 

Brickmaking. — The labour problem becomes 
more difficult every year. A large number of 
Italian workmen are now employed. 

Furniture. — Manufacturers complain of the 
difficulty of obtaining skilled labour. 

Boot and Shoe Trade. — The industry has 
made good headway. The manufacturers com- 
plain of the difficulty in securing skilled hands. 

One of the most striking evidences of Ger- 
many's amazing prosperity is given in the fol- 



GERMANY'S MADNESS 109 

lowing remarkable statement of capital in- 
vested in industrial undertakings: — 

Capital invested in the year 1904 £11,250,000 
'' '» '' 1906 £19,500,000 

An increase of nearly 75 per cent, in two 
years. 

imperialism: German and British 

The upshot, then, of a cool and sincere inves- 
tigation into the state of German political, 
naval and economic conditions is this : that the 
Germans do think of expanding their country 
into an empire proper, and that they have all 
the means of doing so. They have the money 
for it; they have, as was shown above, the 
requisite prudence and the firm resolution to 
avoid complications on the Continent; they are 
fast getting the navy for the carrying out of 
their imperialism. Now, unless a person is 
ready to maintain that a man who is actually 
in a position which entitles him to assume that 
he can readily double his income, will yet and 
in all cases, abstain from doing so; unless, we 
say, one is inclined to assert such a thing, we 
cannot possibly assume that the Germans will. 



110 GERMANY'S MADNESS 

in the near future, abstain from further expan- 
sion, industrial and imperial. There have been 
single individuals who, like Sylla, quietly with- 
drew into private life, although all the treas- 
ures of power and wealth were in their hands. 
But there is in history no record of an entire 
nation that has ever done such a thing. We 
have no right whatever to presume that of the 
Germans. On the contrary, for the reasons 
given, we are obliged to expect them to proceed 
with ever greater energy on the road to impe- 
rialism, or to '^world-power'' as they call it. 

In the opinion of the present writer, the in- 
ability of so many thousands of Englishmen 
to see aright in all questions of the relation of 
Germany to Great Britain is largely due to the 
ignorance in which they are about the real driv- 
ing causes of their own, of British Imperial- 
ism. The average Briton lives and dies in the 
belief that the great achievement that we call 
The British Empire was made chiefly by a sort 
of innate genius of the '* Anglo-Saxon Eace." 
That blessed expression seems to account for 
everything. It is, in fact, not too much to 
say, that forty people out of fifty will conven- 
iently account for most things under the sun by 
referring them either to the weather or to the 



GERMANY'S MADNESS 111 

Anglo-Saxon Eace. Yet, with due deference 
to both of these remarkable Powers, it might 
be urged with no mean lack of probability, that 
there are quite a number of historical, political 
and other events that can be traced back to 
neither of the so-called four seasons in Eng- 
land, nor to the influence of the Anglo-Saxon 
Race. British Imperialism is one of these 
events. It was made neither by meteorolog- 
ical, nor by racial qualities. It was made, be- 
cause it had to be made; because Imperialism 
was more necessary to the dwellers of Great 
Britain than was either the Church of England 
or the Temperance Movement. 

British Imperialism began with William the 
Conqueror, or the famous Franco-Norman who 
succeeded the only one of all English Kings to 
engrave the date of his greatest battle upon the 
memory of every Englishman. This is now not 
too far from 850 years. Imperialism in this 
country is older than Oxford University, the 
House of Commons, the Church of England, the 
Nonconformist Churches, the English Sunday, 
or the English language. At first that Impe- 
rialism spent itself in France (from 1066 to 
1453), and then when it was found out that 
France could not be conquered, it worked at the 



112 GERMANY'S MADNESS 

incorporation of Ireland and Scotland, and when 
that was finished (1707), it went abroad and 
fought and wrought together the present Brit- 
ish Empire. The same reason that made the 
English of 1900 say, ^'from Cape to Cairo," 
made them say in 1100, '^from the Tweed to 
Biarritz,'' or (as Biarritz did not exist at that 
time) ^'from Berwick to Bordeaux." It was 
always the same thing. Imperialism is not a 
matter of choice, or of Knight-errantry, a sort 
of Don Quixote enterprise. This was partly 
taught by the late Professor Seeley; but quite 
wrongly. It was not by *^ absent-mindedness" 
that the British Empire was founded. It was 
an imperative necessity that called it into exist- 
ence. We venture to refer our readers to our 
book Imperialism (1905, Hutchinson) for fur- 
ther details. 

Here we speak of these things only because 
we mean to bring out as strongly as possible 
the fundamental nature of all Imperialism 
proper. This nature spells Necessity. The 
Romans did not build up their Empire because 
in a moment of bored leisure they said to them- 
selves: ^^Life is a nuisance — let us go and do 
something — suppose we conquer the world!" 
They conquered the world because they were 



GERMANY'S MADNESS 113 

placed before the alternative of perishing at 
once or conquering everything. Now, the Ger- 
mans of our days are in a similar position. 
They are at present over sixty million people ; 
that is, the German Empire already contains 
more European whites than does the British 
Empire. They are exceedingly prosperous, 
and, since wealth increases the greed for lux- 
uries even more rapidly than the power to make 
money, the Germans are daily getting more and 
more anxious for the possession of new fields 
of commercial activity and power. But how 
can they do justice to these immensely power- 
ful desires of theirs unless they expand into a 
world-empire? They must become a world- 
empire or they must abdicate. 

THE GERMAN ABROAD 

At a great number of '* classes'' or discus- 
sions after lectures and other public addresses, 
the author has heard it remarked by various 
British men and women, that if the Germans 
want to expand their commerce, they can very 
well do so without waging war with England, 
since England does not roll any obstacles what- 
ever in the way of German immigration into 
British Colonies. This is as yet perfectly true. 



114 GERMANY'S MADNESS 

Germans may at present leave their Father- 
land, repair to, say Australia, and there es- 
tablish any business of their own under condi- 
tions and circumstances identical with those 
applying to an Englishman. No discrimina- 
tion is made against them. They may buy 
land, open shop, trade, import or export, teach, 
perform — in short, do anything they please, 
without anybody forcing them to become Brit- 
ish citizens, or laying upon them any burden 
heavier than that laid upon British citizens. 

All this is quite true; and if the Germans 
were still where they used to be in the first half 
of the nineteenth century; if their Fatherland 
was still a geographical expression rather than 
a high-strung national State, then, and then 
alone, we might very well expect them to emi- 
grate without much heartburning or patriotic 
compunction. However, this has long since 
ceased to be the case. Germany is no longer a 
geographical or purely literary expression. It 
is an intensely developed national polity ; a na- 
tion instinct with all the powers, pride, and pas- 
sion of the older nations, such as the British 
and the French. Thousands of Britons could 
find comfortable berths in countries other than 
such as belong to the British Empire; say in 



GERMANY'S MADNESS 115 

Eussia, Hungary, Italy or Austria. Yet few 
of tliem avail themselves of the opportunity, 
simply because they do not care to live in a 
country not their own. And if any British 
journalist or statesman should publicly preach 
emigration of Britons to non-British countries, 
he would be regarded as an enemy of England. 
It is even so in modern Germany. They do not 
want to lose hundreds of thousands of their 
compatriots to America or to the British Em- 
pire. They want to keep them. They want to 
talk German, to make DeutscMhum and 
Deutschland one and the same thing. If, there- 
fore, anybody should counsel them to unburden 
themselves or the surplus of their teeming pop- 
ulation in Australia or South Africa, they 
would consider such a suggestion as a malig- 
nant one, as a personal insult. Can we wonder 
at that? 

Is it not quite natural that a nation that has 
by hard-won victories finally realised its secu- 
lar dream of political unity does not feel in- 
clined to encourage emigration into foreign 
countries? The German, as is well known, 
easily assimilates himself to new and stronger 
nationalities. During a ^ye years' stay in the 
United States, we have never seen a German 



116 GERMANY'S MADNESS 

who had remained German in his mode of think- 
ing and feeling. One of them, Judge Stallo, 
said he did ; but he did not. We convinced our- 
selves of that by personal intercourse. The 
Canadian French still retain their fine lan- 
guage of the times of Louis XIV. ; the Germans 
in the States drop the idiom of their original 
home in less than one generation. 

There is, be it remarked in passing, a pecul- 
iar reason for that. No ordinary German, 
whose parents were folk living in small provin- 
cial towns in the country, talks ^^high'^ or book- 
German. They all talk a dialect, and Germany 
bristles with an incredible number of dialects, 
jargons, modes of pronunciation, and so on. 
To any one well acquainted with German, it is 
the easiest thing in the world to tell the social 
status of any given German man or woman by 
the language he or she uses, and more espe- 
cially by his or her pronunciation. Now, the 
majority of German-Americans are the chil- 
dren of very humble German folk. Learning 
German from their parents, they can talk only 
such German as their parents gave them, that 
is, peasant German. Rather than reveal, by 
their pronunciation, that they come from peas- 
ant stock, the German-Americans pretend not 



GERMANY'S MADNESS 117 

to know German at all, and even willingly for- 
get their ^ ^ Dutch, ' ' as they call it. In any case, 
the Germans in the States, as everywhere else, 
become first oblivious of, then indifferent to, 
their original language, and so to thousands of 
mental moods and attitudes ingrained in the 
language. They de-Germanize themselves. 
This is but too well known to the people of Ger- 
many. They dread emigration more than any- 
thing else. It institutes to them a national 
danger, a loss in humans. 

A very curious instance of this facile de-Ger- 
manization of some Germans occurred a few 
years ago in — Germany herself. When for 
purposes of higher policy, a great number of 
Polish families were transplanted from Prus- 
sian Poland to Westphalia, with its purely Ger- 
man population, it was soon found out that 
many a German peasant, under the singular 
spell of the Polish women, began to neglect his 
own vernacular, and to talk Polish. This too 
is not incomprehensible. The Germans have, 
on the one hand, become very sensitive as to 
their newly acquired national unity, and united 
nationality; on the other hand, that feeling, 
stronger in words than in fact, has not yet 
reached the intensity and firmness that we find 



118 GERMANY'S MADNESS 

in members of nations who, like the English or 
French, have each been nationally united for 
several hundred years. 

Emigration, then, no matter what facilities 
may be offered to the Germans, is the very 
method they disapprove of most. In fact, their 
leaders do everything in their power to fill 
their compatriots with a strong aversion from 
leaving Germany for a British or American 
country. If, moreover, we take into considera- 
tion the great and constantly rising prosperity 
of contemporary Germany ; especially if we re- 
member that what the German industrials lack 
most is human labour, as Count Posadowsld, 
Imperial Home Secretary, has publicly re- 
marked, and as was shown above in detail; we 
cannot but come to the conclusion that emigra- 
tion to non-German countries is not a way out 
of the difficulty, because it is not likely to be 
resorted to by very many Germans. 

But if emigration is discouraged and dis- 
credited, what else can the Germans do to sat- 
isfy their irresistible desire for expansion? 
Their own colonies are far and unprofitable, 
and not favourable in point of health. On the 
Continent, for reasons just given, they cannot 
expand otherwise than at the risk of a Euro- 



GERMANY'S MADNESS 119 

pean coalition against them. What else can 
they do I The average Briton has never given 
that matter the slightest thought ; and if he has, 
he dismissed it with a vague smile. Or has the 
author not repeatedly heard Englishmen say, 
in effect, that if a war with Germany should 
break out, it will be *'not in our lifetime,'* but 
^^in a hundred years from now"? To one who 
studies German preparations every day of his 
life; to one who knows German and the Ger- 
mans, their history and literature; to such a 
person such remarks send a cold shiver through 
his heart. After the awful experience of the 
Boer War, to talk like that of a war with the 
best-trained, highest-spirited, and most danger- 
ous nation in the world! It is nothing short 
of appalling. 

IMPERIALISM AND THE BIRTH-EATE 

Of course, there is still another way out of 
the difficulty. It is one that implies no hard- 
ship whatever to the British, and is therefore 
welcome to them. It is, moreover, a radical 
solution of the whole German question. It 
would leave no secret animosity against Eng- 
land in the hearts of the Germans. Undoubt- 
edly there is such a method. It has long been 



120 GERMANY'S MADNESS 

known to various nations. This method is — 
to have but very few children; in other words, 
to Malthusianise the nation. Why the Ger- 
mans, in order to please the British and to rid 
them of all bother about wars (a bother that 
might interfere with British amusements at 
music halls, racecourses, comedy theatres, and 
other sublime places), why we say, the Germans 
do not adopt this method of settling the whole 
business, one cannot really quite see. It would 
be so nice of them. However, they do not 
adopt it. The wide and spacious German 
women will persist in bringing forth such a 
number of young Teutons that in the last forty 
years they have outdistanced France by over 
twenty million people. In fifty years from now 
the Germans will certainly be a matter of far 
over 100,000,000 people in the German Empire 
alone. From the Kaiser downwards, they have 
all numerous families. The fact is that the 
Germans have quite appropriated the great les- 
son about the connection between Imperialism 
and children. They know that a nation which 
has reached a certain number must irretrievably 
grow Imperialist, or otherwise — Malthusianise 
herself. We take the liberty of here quoting 
part of an article which we published in the 



GERMANY'S MADNESS 121 

Daily Express of April 18, 1907, and in wMch 
we gave a resume of some of the ideas of our 
book on Imperialism (1905). We said: — 

*^It is well known that millions of modern 
men and women are, as they think, ^dead 
against all Imperialism.' It is to these and 
their friends that I should like to submit some 
human remarks on the relation of Imperialism 
and children. For this purpose, we shall 
shortly regard the modern history of France. 
Repeatedly the French, or rather their rulers, 
attempted to widen the territory of France in 
Europe, that is, to found a French Empire. 

^'The last attempt, clearly prepared by the 
Republicans of the great Revolution (1789- 
1799), was realised, for a time, by Napoleon 
I. He imperialized many a country round 
France. However, the French nation, more 
especially the French women, hated Napoleon's 
imperial ideas. These women, all-powerful in 
France, sapped and sapped the popularity of 
Napoleon, whom they called the man-eater. 

^*When, therefore. Napoleon lost a battle or 
two in 1813 and 1814, the French, instead of 
rallying round their great Imperial leader, as 
the Spanish had done round Palafox, Castanos, 
or Cuesta, for over seven years, at once cooled 



122 GERMANY'S MADNESS 

off, and Napoleon went first to Elba and then 
to St. Helena. The French had missed their 
chance of making an empire. 

^^ Napoleon, the greatest political thinker of 
modern times, had clearly seen that the French, 
already in his time the most populous nation 
in Europe (even Russia was then less popu- 
lous), imperatively needed more elbow-room 
for — children. Unless the French, Napoleon 
thought, get greater chances for human expan- 
sion, they will either emigrate, or — they will, 
given their national and secular passion for 
thrift, cease having children. This is precisely 
what happened. The very reason that made 
French women hate Napoleon, namely, that he 
sent so many Frenchmen out of France, makes 
them hate their large colonies. Madame does 
not want to leave France; and what Madame 
dislikes, the gods, being French and polite, do 
not approve of either. Hence, one thing alone 
remained. ^Let us adopt,* the madames said, 
Hhe system of that amiable English clergy- 
man, Malthus, and have as few children as pos- 
sible.' This they have sedulously done ever 
since : with this interesting result, that France, 
in 1815 more, much more populous than Ger- 
many, is now 22,000,000 less populous than the 



GERMANY'S MADNESS 123 

empire of William II., although the areas of 
the two countries are practically the same. 

**The human note, thus, comes to this: Na- 
poleon's Imperialism, fiercely attacked by 
French and non-French Socialists, pacifistes, 
^humanists,' positivists, anarchists, women, and 
professors of history; Napoleon's Imperialism 
cost the French some two million men, it is 
said. I know that this figure cannot be posi- 
tively proved. But I accept it. Napoleon 
killed two million men for Imperial purposes. 
The Germans, too, lost a similar number. 
Well, may I learn, who killed the twenty-two 
million French now missing? One won- 
ders. . . . 

*^Kill the Imperial sentiment, and you kill 
millions of babes. Kill the Imperial sentiment : 
loosen the Imperial ties; try to manoeuvre out 
of it, to make silly compromises, or to dupe it 
somehow or other, and in the end you will have 
manoeuvred your nation out of children, and 
duped your honour out of all shape." 

The British reader — who is, we are afraid, 
too much given to a minimizing of any danger 
of invasion of or war with Great Britain — 
ought to ponder the preceding reflections with 
great care. The question really comes to this : 



124 GERMANY ^S MADNESS 

What can the Germans do but expand! And 
since they cannot possibly expand on the Con- 
tinent, they must necessarily expand by sea- 
power, which inevitably means conflict with The 
Sea-Power of the world — with Great Britain. 
The one way out of the difficulty would be the 
artificial restriction of the fast-growing popula- 
tion of Germany. This the Germans do not 
want to resort to ; and surely no Briton can, in 
common decency, advise or force them to do 
so. 

WAR IS INEVITABLE 

What, then, can be the ultimate upshot of 
all these circumstances? War — conflict; noth- 
ing else. The reader is most seriously re- 
quested to take all the preceding remarks and 
observations into consideration. We do not 
say that a given German, or this or that set of 
Germans, as such, hate the British. We posi- 
tively know he or they do not. We are con- 
vinced by facts under our immediate observa- 
tion that a very considerable portion of the 
Germans are rather favourably inclined to- 
wards the British. We know that untold num- 
bers of them sincerely admire English litera- 
ture, English ways and social manners. But 



GERMANY'S MADNESS 125 

we do know, at tlie same time, tliat such sympa- 
thy or admiration does not alter the crucial 
point — that is, the fact that Germany wants 
more expansive power at the expense of the 
British. Between Germany and Great Britain 
there is an antagonism that can be gotten over 
only by means of armed conflict. 

All through history we see such antagonisms. 
There was the same antagonism between Athens 
and Sparta; between Rome and Carthage; be- 
tween the Greek and the Roman Catholic 
Church; between England and France in the 
Middle Ages and up to Waterloo; between the 
North and the South of the United States ; and 
between many a minor set of nations. It has 
nothing to do with personal likes or dislikes; 
with the sayings of the Press; with dynastic 
differences; or with ^' racial' ' views. It is in 
the nature of things. It is like the conflict be- 
tween day and night, between winter and sum- 
mer, or between youth and old age. It can be 
staved off for a time; it can never be averted 
altogether. In the present work it is our ob- 
ject to make this as clear and convincing as 
possible. For it needs a lot of convincing in 
this country. In Germany every single person 
is and has long since been sufficiently convinced. 



126 GERMANY'S MADNESS 

In Germany every able-bodied man is a sol- 
dier. Together with his education as an effi- 
cient unit for military purposes, he is taught 
a little history, and the great spirit of an ag- 
gressive and growing nation is infused into him. 
In a country where practically every one man 
is or has been a soldier, the necessities of war 
are amongst the A B C of things; they are 
known to everybody. There is not a grown per- 
son in Germany but knows that, just as he in- 
dividually has to obey his military superior in 
order to keep the whole of the German army in 
sound form, even so, all over Europe, each na- 
tion has to obey her superior, that is, the com- 
mands of European balance of power. 

We do not ignore that many an Englishman 
fondly imagines that Socialism in Germany is 
a disruptive force, or one that will impede or 
incapacitate Germany in any attempt at mak- 
ing political moves of European grandeur. No 
greater illusion can possibly be indulged in. 
Socialism in Germany, as everywhere else on 
the Continent, except France, is a purely theo- 
retic force. It yields to the first onslaught of 
any one of the old historical and real forces on 
the Continent. Witness the signal defeat of 
Socialism in the recent (1907) elections in Ger- 



GERMANY'S MADNESS 127 

many, when the Kaiser and his councillors ad- 
vanced the real forces of their political army. 
Socialism in Germany is politically not a party 
based on historic realities, but only a manoeuvre 
based on abstract ideas of a certain school of 
economists. Now, if there is one thing more 
certain than another, it is this : abstract theories 
cannot, in the long run, undo historic and prac- 
tical forces. 

In England, these two hundred years, there 
have been any number of *^ parties'' teaching 
abstract novelties, such as Theism, Atheism, 
Positivism, and so on. They have never been 
able to cope with the historic and practical 
force called the Anglican Church. It is even 
so with Socialism in Germany. It is abstract. 
It was called into existence by two scholars, by 
Karl Marx and Ferdinand Lassalle. The very 
fact that both were originally of Jewish extrac- 
tion, that is, that neither had had a share in 
the real life of the historic forces of Germany, 
shows that Socialism is born of abstract ideas. 
It can cause, and it has caused, much disturb- 
ance and discussion; it cannot build up or de- 
stroy Germany. Bismarck, faithfully continu- 
ing the traditions of the old and historic class 
of Junker J or country squires, to which he be- 



128 GERMANY ^S MADNESS 

longed ; Bismarck, we say, did build up the unity 
of Germany, and Lassalle failed. 

A nation is not a piece of mineral on and 
with which one can make any experiment one 
chooses. A nation is something organic, and 
refuses to be handled by abstract and mechan- 
ical measures. They, therefore, who indulge 
in any thought of Germany being seriously 
crippled or thwarted by her Socialists are liv- 
ing in a fooPs paradise. Has not Bebel, the 
acknowledged leader of the German Socialists, 
repeatedly declared that his party does not 
believe in disarmament, in settling all interna- 
tional disputes by the Hague Tribunal, and also 
that he and his will unhesitatingly take up arms 
in defence of Germany, or in any cause involv- 
ing the honour and greatness of the Father- 
land? Bebel has drawn upon himself the se- 
vere strictures of M. Herve, the anti-militarist 
leader of the French Socialists, but he did not 
mind that very much. 

Germany has parties — even a peace party. 
However, those parties are like mere shadows, 
as compared with the real power in Germany — 
the State, i.e., principally Prussia. The aver- 
age Englishman has not the least idea of the 
extent to which, in Germany, the influence and 



GERMANY'S MADNESS 129 

interference of the State has practically nulli- 
fied all other activities in the public or political 
life of the Grerman nation. The nearest exam- 
ple in England to that effect are the great banks 
in England. A bank such as the London and 
South- Western Bank, or the London and County 
Bank, may have and does have more than a 
hundred branch offices each; but everybody 
knows that all the business of those banks is 
decided and managed at headquarters. The 
local managers have no power worth speaking 
of. It is all done at the central office. This is 
what happens in Germany with the whole pub- 
lic and political life of Prussia or Bavaria sev- 
erally. In such a country, as one may readily 
gather, political parties have very little to say; 
and Government always finds means to play 
out any party by dexterous electioneering 
moves. Under these conditions the Socialists 
in Germany, anyhow hateful to Government, 
can be and have actually been played out by 
adroit managing of the elections. The Social- 
ists, then, have no power to stop or retard the 
aggressiveness of the German State. 

Other extreme lovers of peace in this coun- 
try indulge in another set of day-dreams. They 
think, and even say in public, that the Ger- 



130 dERMANY'S MADNESS 

mans do not in the least mean to be aggressive 
to Great Britain, and that the war fleet they 
are building is merely a defensive fleet, that is 
to say, one for the legitimate defence of the 
growing and considerable maritime interests of 
the Germans. Now, as half-truths are, as a 
rule, more dangerous than a full-fledged un- 
truth, it may be said that the foregoing state- 
ment is one of pernicious half-truth. Nobody 
means to deny that the maritime commerce and 
the oversea interests of the Germans have in 
the last thirty years been increasing at a very 
rapid rate. Nobody, therefore, can deny the 
Germans the right of seeing to the protection 
of their vast trade by means of a big fleet of 
men-of-war. Yet it is equally true that the idea 
that the principal object of the German fleet 
is defensive and not aggressive is thoroughly 
and hopelessly wrong and absurd. 

A merely defensive army is a military non- 
entity. The British naval victories were all 
won hundreds and thousands of miles away from 
England — at Copenhagen, at Cape St. Vincent, 
at Lagos, Trafalgar, Abukir Bay, etc. That 
means, the English did not think of matters 
naval what now so many British think of mat- 
ters military. They always believed in oifen- 



GERMANY'S MADNESS 131 

sive warfare; they attacked the enemy outside 
the English Channel or the German Sea — in the 
Atlantic, in the Mediterranean, and elsewhere. 
They were, in order to be efficiently defensive, 
in the first place effectively offensive. This is 
an old, old principle of all warfare; and of all 
the nations, the Germans are fully and clearly 
aware of it. They do not for a moment believe 
that their fleet is meant only for purely defen- 
sive purposes. They know that such a state- 
ment is absurd and impossible. They know' 
that to be really able to defend the German 
trade anywhere, they must be in a position to 
attack any one of their rivals or enemies in any 
sea. If, therefore, the German fleet is said to 
be one for defensive purposes only, it is, when 
uttered by Germans, a downright hypocrisy; 
when by British persons, an unmitigated folly. 
The German fleet can have and has only one 
possible aim — that of attack, of offensive war- 
fare, just as has the German army, and even 
very much more so. The German army is 
checkmated to a large extent by a possible coali- 
tion of the rest of the Continental armies. The 
German fleet is not thwarted by such a coalition 
of sea-Powers. 

As the reader may see, it is here contended 



132 GERMANY'S MADNESS 

that the ultimate and even the proximate in- 
tention underlying all the moves of the German 
Empire and the Kaiser is quite patent. There 
is no doubt about it. It is, of course, true that 
if one tries to read the real mind of the Ger- 
mans from hundreds of occasional or chance 
remarks, articles, or other utterances of theirs, 
then indeed the task of making a concordance 
of the bewildering and contradictory statements 
of the German Press — official and non-official — 
becomes overwhelming. However, in a prob- 
lem as great as is the near conflict between Ger- 
many and England, it does not matter very 
much what this paper or that statesman says 
or does not say. William Pitt, shortly before 
the outbreak of the endless wars with France 
from 1792 to 1815, publicly declared that Eu- 
rope was going to have a period of complete 
peace lasting at least fifteen years. If one 
now reads the Times or the Globe of a hundred 
years ago, one is amazed beyond words at the 
profound ignorance in which the writers of 
these papers were with regard to the near fu- 
ture of Napoleon or the Continent. The Ger- 
man question is, like all great questions, almost 
independent of this or the other chance thing 
or event. In European history there always 



GERMANY'S MADNESS 133 

have been currents of events, just as in the 
sea there are currents of water. And, just as 
no whale or shark can stem or alter the gulf- 
stream, even so no ruler or diplomatist can de- 
flect certain historic currents in Europe. To 
this, as to a very important element of our 
study of the German question, we shall soon 
return. 

BRITISH MYOPIA 

At present we want to dwell a little upon the 
effect of the opposite view. We mean the view 
that the German question is not clear at all; 
that we cannot as yet know what the Germans 
are after; and that the conflicting evidence to 
be gathered from an observation of the Ger- 
mans is not sufficient to give us the desired 
clearness. Such views are spread even by pa- 
pers of otherwise great value. It is precisely 
this view, which we combat, that has only lately 
(May 20) been put forward in an able leader 
in the Morning Post. We consider it our duty 
to show the inadequacy of such views. For this 
purpose we here append the leader in toto. It 
says : — 

^^The business of a statesman, said Bismarck 
a good many years ago, is to see things as 



134 GERMANY'S MADNESS 

they are. What is the statesman's business is 
also the business of every citizen in so far as 
he concerns himself with his country's affairs 
or with its relations with other countries. We 
all want to see things as they are. Yet it is 
not always easy. What, for instance, is at 
present the idea and the feeling of the majority 
of Germans on the subject of this country and 
of British policy! If we were to be guided in 
our judgment by what we read in some of the 
German newspapers, we might imagine that the 
Germans were all filled with apprehensions of 
some dire design supposed to be cherished in 
this country against the welfare, the expansion, 
or even the peace of Germany. As no Eng- 
lishman is aware of any such design; indeed, 
as all of us know that no such design exists, 
there would be a temptation to suppose the 
population of Germany alSiicted with some men- 
tal disease or with one of those extraordinary 
delusions of which a once-much-read writer 
wrote a history. But those who have in late 
years travelled in Germany and mixed with the 
people in that country have discovered that 
among the educated class there the representa- 
tive character of the newspapers is denied, and 
it is asserted that the articles unfriendly to 



GERMANY'S MADNESS 135 

England are not the expression of the popular 
feeling, or, at any rate, are not to be taken too 
seriously. Between those papers which make 
it their business to preach down England and 
those cultivated Germans who denounce these 
newspapers it is hard to get at the facts and 
see things as they are. The Germans outside 
of Germany, the travelled Germans, are not 
anti-British. They generally know something 
of England and the English. But they are not 
always listened to with respect by the Germans 
at home, at any rate not by all the newspaper 
writers. It is to be hoped that there will 
shortly be a change of fashion in Germany, and 
that the habit of discussing the imagined deep- 
laid plots of England will die out. Meantime 
it may help towards the clear view which is so 
desirable, to consider some of the undoubted 
facts about the German Empire which are apt 
to be forgotten, not only here, but there. 

^^ Germany has for a whole generation been 
enjoying steady and increasing prosperity. 
None of the great States of Europe has so much 
to show in the way of material progress. Most 
of the large towns have been within the last 
twenty-five years so transformed as to seem 
to have been almost entirely re-built. The 



136 GERMANY'S MADNESS 

standard of comfort, and even of luxury, at- 
tained is beyond the dreams of the last genera- 
tion. Manufacture, trade, and commerce have 
flourished exceedingly. The whole country 
bears on its face the marks of accumulating 
wealth. For education of all sorts and for the 
advancement and diffusion of knowledge pro- 
vision is made on an ampler scale than in any 
other country of Europe. These great ad- 
vances have followed close upon and seemed 
to be the consequences of the great struggles 
which led to the foundation of the new Empire 
as the form and symbol of national unity. Ac- 
cordingly the national self-consciousness has 
been exalted, and Germans to-day take a legiti- 
mate pride in their country. The Army is con- 
sidered, probably rightly, to be the best organ- 
ised and best trained in the world, and the 
Navy has for a whole generation worked hard 
to make itself the Army's counterpart. Ger- 
many's influence makes itself felt far and wide, 
not merely in Europe. These are some of the 
marks of greatness in a nation. The nation 
that is so well situated in regard to its arrange- 
ments for defence, for education, and for trade, 
and of which the prosperity is so remarkable, 



GERMANY'S MADNESS 137 

can hardly have good reason to be excessively 
timid or anxious as to the future. 

^^Yet there are a number of writers in Ger- 
many who seem to spend their time looking 
abroad for possible troubles, and for several 
years past they have represented England as 
the most probable source of danger to Ger- 
many. If these writers had all been silent it 
is quite possible that traders and manufactur- 
ers in England and in Germany would have been 
conscious of a certain rivalry. Mr. Haldane, 
in a speech the other day, spoke of the 'legiti- 
mate antagonism of trade competition. ' But it 
is by no means clear that this antagonism need 
have a national or international aspect. Two 
spinners in Bolton are much keener rivals one 
of the other than either of them of any German 
competitor, and yet they can manage to live 
together in the same town without quarrelling. 
It would not be easy to find a British trader 
or manufacturer who would wish this country 
to pick a quarrel with Germany. Some of them 
would be glad to be helped against German com- 
petition by a protective tariff, but they would 
not on that account wish the two nations to 
enter into the extreme competition of a war. 



138 GERMANY'S MADNESS 

Moreover, men of business best realise that the 
best customers are rich, industrious nations, 
and that Germany and England, with or with- 
out tariffs on one side or on both, are neces- 
sarily bound to have very large commercial 
dealings with one another. Apart from manu- 
facture and trade where the two nations are 
competitors, but not necessarily unfriendly 
competitors, what are the interests of the two 
nations which clash! We have never been able 
to discover them. There is no rational cause 
for a quarrel between England and Germany, 
and if a quarrel arises it must be due to some 
wrong, malice, or misunderstanding. These 
things it is not always possible to prevent. 
They ought not to arise, and it is the duty of 
each nation and of each Government to avoid 
being the author of any such occasion of dis- 
pute, and, of course, also to be strong enough 
in case of a gratuitous quarrel thrust upon it 
to defend itself. 

^^The latest misunderstanding, if it is a mis- 
understanding, seems to be due to the fact that 
King Edward, like the German Emperor, occa- 
sionally travels to visit the Sovereigns of other 
countries, and that these visits, on the whole. 



GERMANY'S MADNESS 139 

have contributed towards closer relations be- 
tween Great Britain and the other countries. 
The wider the circle of these international cour- 
tesies and kindnesses extends, the more likely 
is the preservation of peace. That this view 
should not commend itself to some of the Ger- 
man critics is remarkable seeing that Ger- 
many's great achievement is held to have been 
the preservation of the peace of Europe by a 
series of alliances. The close understandings, 
first between the three Emperors and after- 
wards between Germany, Austria, and Italy, 
are held by German statesmen to have been the 
foundations of a European equilibrium that has 
lasted some thirty years. A close understand- 
ing between England and France, between Eng- 
land and Italy, and between England and any 
other Great Power is not likely to aim at any 
disturbance of the status quo or at any attack 
on other Powers. If, therefore, there are 
alarms in Germany, the observer who wishes 
to see things as they are must infer that they 
are of purely German origin, and are not at- 
tributable to any action that has taken place 
outside that country. The problem which the 
observer has to solve is to account for this 



140 GERMANY ^S MADNESS 

spontaneous generation of heat in a body politic 
having so many of the elements of health and 
strength as the German Empire.'^ 

The writer of the preceding article is quite 
right in his main contention, to the effect that, 
unless we can see things as they are, all our 
efforts to construe aright the political situa- 
tion will be abortive. The present work is only 
an attempt to see things as they are, and as 
they will be on the basis of what they are at 
present (1907). In using the word ''things,'^ 
we mean to distinguish things from persons. 
In all politics, persons are of great importance ; 
but in some questions of great or international 
politics, single persons are not all-decisive. 

This is where the ordinary diplomatist or 
statesman makes his gravest errors. For in- 
stance, a given ambassador of Great Britain at 
the Court of Berlin is, by the very nature of 
his office, thrown in daily contact with the 
Kaiser, his Ministers, his other officials, and 
the various persons moving on the political 
stage of Berlin. These he, the ambassador, 
may and frequently does know very well. See- 
ing that these persons apparently do the whole 
of German policy, or that all the acts and docu- 
ments coming officially from Germany may, at 



GERMANY'S MADNESS 141 

least outwardly, be traced to the activity or in- 
fluence of these persons — the ambassador, not 
unnaturally, believes that they are the true 
originators and, as it were, the causes of all 
those documents and acts. And since the am- 
bassador knows each of them intimately, he 
readily persuades himself that he has a real 
insight into their characters and minds, and 
thus also into the real causes of German pol- 
icy. However, in thinking so, that ambassa- 
dor frequently, and in great international ques- 
tions always, commits a fatal error. 

The ultimate and true cause of events and 
measures in German policy is not exclusively 
in the characters and minds of a number of offi- 
cial persons in Berlin. In such great questions 
there are impersonal causes driving on both the 
non-officials and the officials. To these great 
questions belongs, in the first place, the conflict 
between Germany and Great Britain. It is a 
conflict based on facts and tendencies inde- 
pendent of the will or belief of this or that in- 
dividual man. It is in the very nature of things. 
If, therefore, we continue to consult the say- 
ings or doings of German official persons only, 
or, for the matter of that, of British officials 
only, we are not likely at all to get at the root 



142 GERMANY'S MADNESS 

and driving cause of tlie whole question. Those 
sayings and doings may very well be contra- 
dictory, and are mostly misleading. They are 
meant to be so. This is also in the nature of 
things. 

Again, is it not about high time that every 
man in this country should clearly understand 
a fact taught and observed by all unprejudiced 
students of European politics? We mean the 
fact that in all international matters the nations 
of Europe stand to one another nearly always 
in a ^ ^ state of nature. ' ' They recognise but too 
frequently nothing but the law of Might, or 
the law of the stronger fist. However polished, 
** civilised,'' or *^ educated" the nations of Eu- 
rope may be inside their respective boundaries 
and towards members of their own country, it 
is historically certain that in all very serious 
international questions they have almost in- 
variably behaved like egoistic savages. One 
nation, in these matters, is as bad as another. 
Under these circumstances, we cannot allow our- 
selves to slip into the convenient belief that 
there will be no conflict with Germany, because 
this or that German minister or chancellor is 
**such a nice fellow." So he may be — in pri- 
vate life. As soon as he enters on life inter- 



GERMANY'S MADNESS 143 

national, lie is at once *4n a state of nature." 
From a German filled with the humanitarian 
ideals of Lessing, Schiller, and Goethe, he be- 
comes forthwith a human animal. As such he 
obeys only the instincts of his uncontrolled na- 
ture, and all that he asks of his cultured intel- 
lect is to serve him with specious excuses for 
his animal instincts. This, the good intellect 
(read: lawyers, statesmen, journalists) always 
furnishes him with. 

Undoubtedly the Germans will, in case of 
actual conflict, declare that they have been * * out- 
raged," ''bullied," or ''deceived" into it by the 
"perfidious British." That goes without say- 
ing. The English have always been "perfidi- 
ous." They won the battles of Crecy, Poitiers, 
Agincourt, the victory over the Armada, the 
battles of Naseby, the Boyne river, Cape La 
Ilougue, Blenheim, Malplaquet, Quebec, Plas- 
sey, Wandewash, St. Vincent, Camperdown, the 
Nile, and Trafalgar — all by "perfidy." They 
made The Parliament — by "perfidy." They 
persuaded Shakespeare to pose as the author 
of Hamlet and a few other dramas, not unknown 
to fame, written by some other person, prob- 
ably a Prussian — by "perfidy." It has long 
been proved. It cannot be doubted. In fact. 



144 GERMANY'S MADNESS 

all great States are perfidious, and all small 
ones are painfully honest. The Prussians, of 
whom Prince Bismarck himself said that they 
'^made no moral conquests,'' the Prussians are 
God-fearing goodies, or what our girls would 
call ''such dears." 

If the thing was not so terribly serious, it 
would be killingly funny. The average man 
invariably takes the symptom for the cause, 
the person for the thing, the skin for the bone, 
and the occasion for the motive. In the pres- 
ent case we venture to submit that the matter 
is so grave that it ought, for once, to persuade 
even the average man of this country to pierce 
the shell of things, and to grasp the core thereof. 
We said above that in all European history 
there are currents, ''streams" of events which 
cannot be unmade by the influence of any in- 
dividual or any set of individuals. One of these 
maelstroms is the antagonism between Ger- 
many and Great Britain. This, and this alone, 
is the truth. All diplomatic incidents, such as 
messages, speeches, press articles, conventions, 
meetings, banquets, wires, and wireless reports, 
are mere externals. They cannot alter the 
stream. They may retard it ; they may discol- 
our it. They will never deflect it. 



GERMANY'S MADNESS 145 



FOREWARNED IS FOREARMED 

Wliat, then, is the only thing to be done? 
Evidently only one thing: prepare for the con- 
flict. The Germans have learnt this lesson thor- 
oughly. They are, as a nation and as individ- 
uals, preparing themselves carefully. Their 
^^Navy League'' numbers close on a million 
members. The British Navy League does not 
exceed 20,000. In Germany every ablebodied 
person is a soldier, filled with the great military 
spirit — the spirit that made old Blticher say to a 
tottering Prussian regiment in battle: *''Ye 
scoundrels, do you then want to live for ever I" 
The spirit that prompts every German to think 
that if he were not ready to die for his country, 
what on earth is he living for 1 The spirit that 
shrinks from no sacrifice, from no self-denial, 
from no hardship of discipline. The spirit that 
is aware that to speak constantly of the rights 
of citizenship is only half the thing; the more 
important part is to think of the duties of citi- 
zenship. The spirit that fills a man with the 
true sense of immortality, that is, with the feel- 
ing that he has obligations not only towards his 
contemporary fellow citizens, but also to those 



146 GERMANY'S MADNESS 

that will be his fellow citizens in the generation 
to come. 

This spirit is strength, great strength. It is 
this spirit that has made our incomparable Eu- 
rope, as thousands of years ago it raised the 
Greeks, Jews, and Romans above all the other 
nations of the world. That spirit can be com- 
bated only by a like spirit. Numbers will not 
do. Spirit is vanquished by spirit alone. The 
** two-power standard '* is a mere snare. It is 
the view of a grocer or a haberdasher. Now, 
a grocer or haberdasher is a very valuable mem- 
ber of the community in his way ; and the social 
displacement from which he suffers in this coun- 
try is most unjustified and absurd. But his 
views on international questions are somewhat 
narrow. He is apt to assume that, if a man 
with £100 in his till has more business power 
than the man with only £50 in his box, even so 
a nation with two ships against one of its enemy 
has the greater military power of the two. 
Nothing can be more misleading. England beat 
Spain, although the Armada consisted of very 
many more vessels than were then in the posses- 
sion of the English. The French beat all the 
European armies, including British corps too, 
from 1792 to 1813. The Japanese beat bulky 



GERMANY ^S MADNESS 147 

Russia; and the Boers held out close on three 
years against overwhelming odds. History is 
full of such examples ; and, if people only cared 
to study itj they would find that all history is 
one of minorities. Look at a map of Europe. 
Russia is by far the largest territory; has she 
ever been the most important? England looks 
tiny enough on the map, as against Scandinavia, 
France, Spain, Germany, Austria-Hungary, 
Russia; has she not in the last two hundred 
years played first fiddle at more than one mo- 
ment critical for all Europe! 

To weigh probable success by numbers, to 
leave out the immense leverage of spirit, is not 
only ridiculous, but most dangerous too. Even 
in business, any observer who cares to study the 
question will find that, as a rule, he who begins 
on nothing, or with no capital to speak of, very 
frequently beats the heir or successor who com- 
menced business with an established house and 
much capital. The former, the successful busi- 
ness man who had nothing at the start, had the 
right spirit ; the other had not. The spirit, the 
great spirit is, we repeat it, the great winner of 
battles. There is no doubt whatever that the 
Germans at present are brimful with that spirit. 
They overdo it, no doubt; they are positively 



148 GEEMANY'S MADNESS 

swelled-headed ; they suffer from megalomania. 
Yet the very exaggeration of the thing proves 
that the thing itself is there. And since such a 
spirit can be combated only by a like spirit, the 
question, the great and ominous question, arises 
— whether this country has the same spirit. 
Whether Great Britain and her people are ani- 
mated by the same consciousness of the critical 
situation of all Europe, which the Germans are 
clearly aware of. Whether the average Briton 
feels that Europe has come to a period of far- 
reaching decisions. Whether he has any idea 
at all that Europe, instead of having been all 
during the last century a complicated game of 
chess between six Great Powers, has now been 
reduced to a simple duel between two Great 
Powers only. Whether he can really grasp all 
that this undeniable fact implies. Whether he 
feels within himself the force to arouse himself 
out of the slumber of self-complacency, and face 
the stern tasks imposed upon him by history, 
with a manly courage. 

A Briton of to-day is not the son of his par- 
ents only. Two thousand years of history 
weigh upon him. Two thousand years of 
struggle, work, and extraordinary efforts — 
mental, moral, and material — ^have laid upon 



GERMANY ^S MADNESS 149 

him an immense responsibility. He is not a 
gentleman of independent means; he is a de- 
positary. He must not think — and woe to him 
and his nation if he does so think — that he can 
draw on his means given him by sixty genera- 
tions of heroes and workers, freely and ad lib. 
He is a depositary ; he will have to account for 
his means to the next generation, and, unless 
he be more careful than he is, to himself too. 
Otherwise it will happen to him, what always 
happens to faithless depositaries. He will lose 
his honour, together with his means. Again we 
ask, are we entitled to say that the average man 
in this country is fully conscious of all these 
momentous truths! 

To say with childish self-complacency, ^'Our 
fleet cannot be beaten'' is too dangerous for 
words. In history the Impossible alone is im- 
possible. II ne faut jamais dire, jamais, as 
Prince Metternich used to say. If indeed, a 
nation, well protected by Nature, trained 
through secular practice and tradition is in 
actual possession of a great naval force ; and if 
such a nation continues to do everything to keep 
up her great efficiency ; then, and only then, that 
nation may with fair probability assume that 
it cannot easily be beaten. But this constant 



150 GERMANY'S MADNESS 

preparation requires two things before any- 
thing else : First, the right spirit in the whole 
nation; and then, in addition to daily practice 
in the art of war, a very careful study of naval 
warfare in the past. 

The spirit ; the spirit — there is the whole mat- 
ter. The spirit of earnestness, of real serious- 
ness. The British are grave enough; are they 
also sufficiently serious? Are they anxious 
concerning the vast problems still to be solved 
by them? They devote millions in money and 
billions in words, written and spoken, to the 
problem of the alleged intemperance of the 
British nation. Do they devote adequate at- 
tention to the political intemperance of their 
great rivals, the Germans 1 The very people in 
Great Britain who go about preaching, writing, 
lecturing, collecting money, etc., etc., to combat 
the supposed intemperance of the British nation 
— that can be easily proved to drink less than 
one-third of the quantity of wine, beer, or 
liqueurs consumed either in France, Germany, 
or Austria-Hungary — the very people, we 
say, go about preaching, lecturing, and writing 
on the moderation and friendliness of a nation 
that thinks of nothing, and can think of noth- 



GERMANY'S MADNESS 151 

ing else than the destruction of British suprem- 
acy on sea. 

Who does not know that the numerous goody- 
goody ' ' peace-at-all-price ' ' people, who publicly 
declare that Germany does not dream of at- 
tacking England, are mostly the very faddists 
who tell and spread the grossly exaggerated 
reports about the perdition of this country by 
the consumption of too much drink? The vari- 
ous ^' peace societies'* venture to say and pub- 
licly to state that Germany does not dream of 
attacking England. And such criminal drivel 
is said in the face of the fact that the Boers, 
with only 50,000 men, against the 5,000,000 of 
the Germans, did dare to attack British posses- 
sions a few years ago. Many people in Eng- 
land imagine that the Germans mean to invade 
this country, even to possess themselves of it. 
Nothing is more remote from the minds of the 
Germans. At any rate, this is not at all the 
principal idea. What they do think of, and 
what in their international and home situation 
they are bound to think of, is to win the suprem- 
acy on sea, or, if that be impossible, equality 
on sea with the British. Invasion of England 
is a mere incident in their plan. Once they de- 



152 GERMANY'S MADNESS 

feat the British Navy in the North Sea; once 
they hold this sea, as the Dutch repeatedly, and 
for long periods, held it, they have attained 
everything they really want. 

The game of interests, counter-interests, side- 
interests, and side-counter-interests amongst 
the Powers of Europe is so subtle that no great 
player of the game need despair of doing again 
what has been repeatedly done before. The 
Germans, we repeat it, do not contemplate an 
invasion of this country; certainly not in the 
first place. They saw, even in their successful 
war with the French, that the second part of 
that war, or the one in which the French nation 
as such defended her territory, was by far less 
successful than the first, where the Germans 
fought the regular armies of France. The 
great surrenders of whole corps happened in 
the first part of the war only. The Germans 
only meditate how to make it impossible for the 
British to maintain the claim to supremacy on 
sea. To this one great task the Germans sub- 
ordinate all and everything. It dictates their 
diplomacy, their acts, their preparations. 

He who has never made a serious study of 
History, is very likely to estimate wrongly many 
a feature in the life of a nation. Thus, to give 



GERMANY'S MADNESS 153 

just one instance, tlie so-called absurd move- 
ments in Society or in political life are almost 
invariably misjudged by men unversed in the 
study of the play of historic forces. Take as 
an example the excessive theories now launched 
in the sea of German literature. We have 
heard of some of them in the previous part of 
the present book. The average man laughs at 
them, condemns them as unreasonable, and 
thinks that, being unreasonable and absurd, 
they must needs fail of success. No graver 
error could be indulged in. Of two sets of so- 
cial or political moves, the more absurd one has 
by far the greater likelihood of success. Far 
from pooh-poohing and contemptuously ignor- 
ing these *' absurdities,'' caused in Germany 
by the overweening conceit of the German 
teachers, leaders of thought, and their pupils, 
we ought to take them into very serious con- 
sideration. A nation like the Germans, that 
eagerly assimilates such theoretic stuff, is soon 
ready to crave for the deeds crystallising those 
theories in practical reality. In fact, had His- 
tory been taught properly, no man in Great 
Britain could for a moment doubt that the very 
excesses and absurdities at present rife all over 
Germany with regard to the immense role that 



154 GERMANY'S MADNESS 

the Germans are *^ evidently" destined to play 
in the sublunar world, clearly indicate and 
prove that from mere vague hopes and 
dreams, the Germans are on the point of com- 
ing to deeds. Where there is so much smoke, 
flames are sure to break out soon. 

GERMAN ASSETS 

Leaving such general reflections, which, as 
we know, have not much weight with British 
readers, we hasten to point out some more con- 
crete and palpable factors in the coming wave 
of German Imperialism. The Germans have 
various features of their own that distinguish 
them from former nations who attempted to 
build up great Empires. Thus, to speak in the 
first place, of one of the most important points : 
Nearly all previous nations showed a marked 
tendency to the artificial restriction of the 
growth of population, as soon as they passed 
the line of moderate wealth and reached the 
state of inordinate material prosperity. The 
ancient Romans, the richer they grew in money, 
the poorer they became in children. It was 
even so with the Greeks, the Byzantines, the 
Italian Republics, and many a modern state. 
Not so the Germans. Although their material 



GEEMANY'S MADNESS 155 

prosperity lias, in the last generation, risen by 
leaps and bounds almost unparalleled in modem 
times, their population, far from decreasing, is 
rising so quickly that, according to SchmoUer, 
they will be 104,000,000 in the year 1965; ac- 
cording to Hiibbe-Schleiden, 150,000,000 in the 
year 1980; and according to Leroy-Beaulieu, 
200,000,000 in the year 2000. 

At any rate, it is certain that as amongst the 
more advanced nations of Europe the Germans 
are now the most numerous by far, so they are 
likely to remain the most populous highly 
civilised nation in Europe. This is, one 
need hardly insist, a very important factor. 
They mean to expand imperially, and are fully 
convinced of their ability to do so. 

Equally important is another feature of mod- 
ern Germany. It consists in that the Germans, 
quite unlike the French, attained their utmost 
power, not through violent and destructive 
revolutions at home, but by means of a great 
and victorious war with the French outside 
Germany. The French obtained the greatest 
momentum of strength and power by and 
through a fearful civil convulsion attacking 
every one of the organs of their body-politic, 
by the French E evolution. Such convulsions 



156 GERMANY'S MADNESS 

may and do give the nation so convulsed an 
energy of the most intense kind, and hence an 
unusual leverage in the conflict with other na- 
tions; yet the leverage acquired by the Ger- 
mans, if not quite as great as that of France in 
1794 or 1796, was made good without any funda- 
mental upheaval of the whole structure of the 
German polity. Consequently the Germans 
show a steadier and surer growth in power. 
Having grown steadily, they gained in sureness 
of power what they lost in time and intensity. 

The above two features are only part of a 
series of distinctive advantages possessed by 
Germany in the competition for rule and expan- 
sion. When, in former ages, the French were 
the mightiest nation on the Continent, they yet 
never counted amongst their advantages the 
asset that Germany to-day is quite sure of. 
France had allies, but they were, as a rule, 
small Powers. Germany has a staunch and re- 
liable ally that is not a small Power, Austria- 
Hungary. France was never sure of either her 
flanks or her rear. Germany is quite sure of 
her rear. Finally, and perhaps principally, the 
great efforts made by France to realise imper- 
ial expansion were much less the wish and ear- 
nest desire of the French people than the dynas- 



GERMANY'S MADNESS 157 

tic policy of her rulers. In Germany, at pres- 
ent, the people itself wants, believes in, and de- 
mands imperial expansion. In Germany an im- 
perialist, like Mazarin in France, will not be 
hampered by dissensions at home, such as the 
Frondes of 1648-1653, which exasperated the 
great Cardinal. 

All these undoubted facts conspire to make 
the situation of Germany a very strong one. 
To overlook them would be fatal to Great 
Britain. From her very situation in historic 
space. Great Britain has, ever since the Tudors, 
been one of the umpires of the Balance of 
Power in Europe. It matters everything to 
the British, whether the central State on the 
Continent, i.e., Germany, is strong or weak, ag- 
gressive or submissive. Evidently, no State 
can eventually upset the balance of Europe as 
readily as can the central State. Napoleon I. 
himself became a European power only after 
he had practically seized most of Germany. He 
never had the whole of Italy, or of Spain ; nor 
did it much matter. But the possession of Ger- 
many gave him the command of the Continent. 
Even of Austria-Hungary he never possessed as 
much as of Germany, although he defeated the 
Austrian armies more frequently. The greater 



158 aEEMANY'S MADNESS 

half of the then Austrian monarchy, or Hun- 
gary, he never controlled. Yet he was the con- 
trolling Power on the Continent, because he 
practically controlled the whole of Germany. 
It is by such considerations that one may arrive 
at the true estimation of the fact, that there 
is now in the very centre of the Continent a 
strong and united Empire ; the German Empire. 
The possibilities implied in this fact are bound- 
less. So far any serious student of European 
politics must go with the most extreme of Ger- 
mans. In fact, it must be admitted that no 
State in Europe is in a position so favourable 
for imperial expansion as is Germany. The 
more clearly we see that, the more fully we con- 
vince ourselves of the truth and force of this 
statement, the surer will be our step on the 
slippery ground of political conjectures. 



In the preceding remarks we dwelt, and in- 
tentionally, on the strong and advantageous fea- 
tures of Germany as an international Power. 
It would be childish to deny that Germany suf- 
fers also from the defects of her virtues. She 
too has her weak points, her very faulty sides, 
and before coming to the final summing-up of 



GEEMANY'S MADNESS 159 

the facts and to the verdict, it is necessary to 
dwell on some of the graver shortcomings inher- 
ent in the German nation and empire. We are 
going to do so at once. However, we cannot 
omit remarking that before examining the 
strong or the weak points of Germany, a Briton 
ought never to lose sight of one cardinal fact 
that is more than likely to render his view of 
German politics unsafe. 

Professor Schiemann, the well-known Ger- 
man politician and personal adviser of the 
Kaiser, rightly said a propos of the late visit 
of British journalists in Germany, that to the 
average Briton Germany is quite unknown. To 
this we add that, not only is this the case with 
regard to present or contemporary Germany, 
but still more so with regard to Germany in the 
past, or to the history of Germany. Thus his- 
tory might be left out from practical politics if 
it did not shape it, if it did not influence it. 
But it does. No one can understand contem- 
porary German politics who does not possess 
sound knowledge of German history. In Eng- 
lish historical literature there are exceedingly 
few authoritative books on German history. 
While the Germans have written up every as- 
pect of English history in a very large number 



160 OERMANY'S MADNESS 

of elaborate, if not perfect books, the British 
have done, comparatively, very little with re- 
gard to German history. But even this does 
not show the full strength of the point we want 
to raise. Not only have the British no 
scholarly or practical knowledge of Germany, 
whether in the past or in the present, but they 
are also very likely to misconstrue the facts they 
do know on that subject. 

Ever since the Middle Ages, the principal Eu- 
ropean enemies of England were the Dutch, the 
Spanish, and especially the French. In fact, 
from 1688 to the end of the nineteenth cen- 
tury, France was the hereditary enemy of Eng- 
land, or was considered to be so. In the course 
of the secular conflicts with France, the British 
naturally learned much about the temper, 
habits, tendencies, and resources of the French. 
As in all wars we want to adapt ourselves to 
the means of our adversary, one may state with 
absolute accuracy that the British diplomatic, 
naval and also partly the military traditions 
are distinctly adapted to and meant to serve 
in conflicts with a particular sort of enemy, 
with the French. Undoubtedly, many a Brit- 
ish diplomatist or admiral, saturated with the 



GERMANY'S MADNESS 161 

secular traditions of Anglo-Frencli wars, would 
be a matcli for any French diplomatist or ad- 
miral. Nothing is more likely. It is, however, 
still doubtful whether that British diplomatist 
would prove as efficient a representative in dip- 
lomatic conflict with Germany too. 

We have only to consult history to find, that, 
for instance, James I. committed a long series 
of blunders because he persisted in treating 
Spain as if she had been what France then 
really was. He knew France, so he simply ap- 
plied his method of dealing with France to his 
way of dealing with Spain. It can hardly be 
doubted that, in all diplomatic, naval, or mili- 
tary conflicts with Germany, means other than 
those that applied to France must come into 
play. Germany is not France; the Germans 
are, if not radically, yet sensibly different from 
the French. Their geographical, political, eco- 
nomic and social features are largely differ- 
ent. But chiefly their historic growth, this, the 
main factor in a nation's life, differentiates 
them from the French. The British know much 
about the French ; they know practically nothing 
about the Germans ; whereas the Germans are 
well acquainted with everything British. 



162 GERMANY'S MADNESS 

FORMIDABLE BUT BRITTLE 

This, then, is the necessary remark that had 
to be premised in order to give the reader the 
proper point of view for a right estimation of 
the strong and weak points of the Germans. 
With this important proviso, we may now try 
to stndy the less advantageous points of the 
Germans. And in the first place, and before 
everything else, it must be remarked that the 
Germans are a power at once formidable and 
brittle. Powers are measured, not by what 
they can do when victorious, but by what they 
are likely to be able to do when misfortune 
overtakes them. 

On consulting history we find that no nation 
in Europe has proved so brittle, so utterly un- 
able to recover from one fell blow of the fate of 
battle, as did Prussia, or the dominant State in 
the German Empire. When in 1806 Napoleon 
and Davout, on one and the same day, beat the 
Prussian armies at Jena and Auerstaedt, all 
Prussia succumbed like a house of cards. 
Huge, well-garrisoned Prussian fortresses sur- 
rendered to a few French cavalry regiments. 
The collapse of Prussia is unparalleled in all 
modern history; yet it happened only twenty 



GERMANY'S MADNESS 163 

years after the death of Prussia's greatest 
King, Frederick II., the Great. The men who, 
later on, regenerated and rebuilt Prussia, were 
all of them non-Prussians. Scharnhorst, Stein, 
Bliicher were, by birth, no Prussians. Here, in 
this fact, is implied one of the greatest failings 
of the Prussian system. 

That much-imitated system breeds great 
measures, but no great men. At any rate, not 
a sufficient number of great personalities. 
States cannot be made enduringly strong with- 
out the possession of the strongest and most 
efficient of all assets, that is. Personalities. 
There is Frederick II., and Bismarck; but that 
is all. The great personalities of the Germans 
are literary and artistic, not political, nor mili- 
tary. In denying the Prussians, and the Ger- 
mans in general, the possession of great mili- 
tary personalities, we seem to expose ourselves 
to the sneer of the best-petted prejudices of the 
day. Yet we will persist in saying that the 
Germans are not likely to have great captains 
of war. The German army may be, and no 
doubt is, highly organised and disciplined. 
But to have a well-trained army is like having 
an elaborate dictionary of words. Does the 
possession of the dictionary vouchsafe the 



164 GERMANY'S MADNESS 

possession of a fine style? Style is a matter of 
personality; so is the style of an army. The 
greatest nations of all history excelled infinitely 
less in system and measures, whether political 
or military, than in the faculty of producing 
men with a great political or military person- 
ality. The Romans, of all nations, had no sys- 
tem whatever. 

The Germans, who have written more on 
Roman history than all other nations put to- 
gether, have yet never understood the A B C of 
Roman history. Professor Mommsen, the Ger- 
man '^authority'' on Roman history, has writ- 
ten up in five big volumes the ^^ system'' of the 
Roman constitution. The truth is, the Romans 
had no system of their constitution, no more 
than the modern English have. It was all a 
matter of personality. Not the edict of the 
Praetor, but the Praetor himself was the im- 
portant point. 

Just so, in real war, it is not the military 
ordinances, but the great power of a military 
personality that wins battles and campaigns. 
In Germany this is all practically impossible. 
As great conservatories of music make no really 
great virtuosi, so the German army system 
breeds only efficient mediocrities, but no great 



GERMANY'S MADNESS 165 

military personality. Wlien all goes well, as it 
did in France in 1870-1871, thanks chiefly to 
the demoralization of the French, such a Prus- 
sian system works admirably. But when things 
do not go well, it is bound to come to grief. 
This can be proved almost mathematically. 
Since the German system provides not only for 
normal but also for emergency or problematic 
cases and since each German officer is bound to 
obey the given rules to the letter it follows with 
irrefutable certainty that the German army, 
in any case of novel situations or of unforeseen 
yet probable reverses, would be at a loss what 
to do. Especially would this be so if the oppos- 
ing force consisted of officers to whom a broad 
margin of personal initiative was given. 

We are quite aware that much initiative was 
taken by, if not given to, the German officers 
in the Franco-German war. This, however, 
does not alter matters very much, because that 
war was, for the Germans, a victorious one from 
the very start. It does not indicate what the 
German officers would do in case of continued 
reverses ; more particularly, if we consider that 
the Germans have had no great war for now 
over six-and-thirty years. Such a long peace is 
deadly to the rise of free and great military 



166 GERMANY'S MADNESS 

personalities endowed with boundless resource- 
fulness. We are so strongly convinced of the 
absolute truth of this statement that we do not 
hesitate to aver that any great European State 
that would pass through the practice of a really 
great war with a European Power other than 
Germany, would by such a practice alone obtain 
an immense advantage over the Germans, and 
eventually beat them. If Austria-Hungary, 
rousing herself out of her lethargy, would carry 
on a two years' war with Turkey for the posses- 
sion of the western part of the Balkans, and if 
Austria-Hungary came out victorious over the 
brave and hard-fighting Turks, she would have 
thereby alone indefinitely increased her chance 
of beating back a German attack upon her. 

The current view that the German army is in- 
vincible cannot for a moment be maintained. 
If an army has gone through a succession of 
victorious campaigns, and has actually defeated 
its most important competitors, then, and for 
the time being, it may be said that such an 
army is probably invincible. But of an army 
that has had no great war for more than one 
generation, it is impossible to say with any 
degree of certainty whether or no it is invinci- 
ble. Nobody wants to deny that there is, to use 



GERMANY'S MADNESS 167 

the words of Napoleon, an art of war, and that 
the Germans are doing everything in their 
power to carry that art to its highest pitch, as 
far as that can be done in times of peace. But 
it is equally certain that the art of war, as every 
other art, finds its most perfect expression 
through a great artist, that is, through a per- 
son born to it, and endowed with a great mili- 
tary personality. Now what we here contend is 
that the over-systematization and over-regula- 
tion of everything connected with the German 
army renders the rise of a great German mili- 
tary personality not very probable. Of course, 
in the other countries of Europe there is as yet 
even less probability of the rise of such a tower- 
ing captain. At any rate, we desire to warn 
the reader and student of European policy from 
assuming too rashly the absolute superiority of 
the German army as an engine of war. 

The reader may be surprised to hear that in 
our opinion the German Navy is very much less 
hampered by defects such as we pointed out 
with regard to the German Army. In the Ger- 
man Navy there is no secular tradition weigh- 
ing upon the elastic members of the service. 
The Germans have, in the inhabitants of the 
north coast of their empire, a numerous and 



168 GERMANY'S MADNESS 

hardy sea-faring population. With regard to 
their chances in maritime warfare they are in- 
finitely less cocksure, hence much less system 
ridden than with regard to their view of war on 
land. They do everything to make themselves 
acquainted with all the physical, geographical 
and strategic features of the North Sea, and of 
other seas. At Bergen, in Norway, there is 
given every year an elaborate course of lectures 
on everything connected with the nature of the 
North Sea. The elasticity and greater personal 
initiative allowed to captains, officers, and 
crews of German men of war are very remark- 
able. 

PERILS OP BUREAUCRACY 

One of the greatest failings of the Germans is 
their inability to take private and individual 
initiative in any public affair. Everything is 
done by the State-paid members of a vast 
bureaucracy. The State is everything in Ger- 
many; Society is, for purposes of public and 
political life, not in existence at all. As long as 
there is peace, such a system works admirably. 
It is a sunny-day system. In times of national 
reverses the first thing to break down is tlicl: 
very bureaucracy which otherwise forms the 



aERMANY'S MADNESS 169 

prop and mainstay of the people. Once the 
bureaucracy breaks down, there happens, what 
we saw in Russia on the breakdown of the Mos- 
covite bureaucracy. Public business cannot be 
carried on without some men commanding an 
authority sufficiently great to make people obey 
them. But where, as in Germany, all authority 
is monopolised by a bureaucracy, nobody is able 
to command authority on the break-up of 
bureaucracy. What saved Rome and has al- 
ways saved England is the very fact that in 
both realms there always were men command- 
ing the requisite authority. In Britain such 
men are, as a rule, not even in office. In Ger- 
many they are practically impossible. The 
constitution of the German Empire was made 
by Bismarck with the deliberate intention of 
rendering the rise of politically important but 
unofficial personalities a practical impossibil- 

ity. 

In case of disaster, unless Germany happens 
to have an inordinately gifted ruler, she is ex- 
posed to greater chances of decomposition than 
most other nations of Europe. The Germans 
have never learned the open secret that their 
greatest achievements in literature, science, 
philosophy, and music were, as a rule, done by 



170 GERMANY'S MADNESS 

men trammelled by no bonds of officialdom and 
State-hierarchy. They have never seen, and 
will never see that what holds good for intellec- 
tual greatness, holds good also for greatness 
political. Instead of having twenty-six rulers 
as they now have, they would have, had they 
ever learned the Great Lesson of Politics, 
twenty-six great and free statesmen ; or, in other 
words, twenty-six possible saviours in times of 
reverses. Any nation fighting Germany on 
land must concentrate all its efforts on a con- 
siderable initial success, as the surest means of 
depriving the Germans of most of the advan- 
tages now given them by their system. 

Germany is in this respect the very contrast 
to Britain. In the latter country initial suc- 
cesses of the adversary have seldom proved of 
much importance. The true force of this coun- 
try came out in times of reverses even much 
more than in periods of success. In Britain the 
number of independent men, working on their 
own initiative and on their own responsibility, 
is very much greater than that of similar in- 
dividuals in Germany. Such independent per- 
sons have long learned to stand adversity — to 
be, as the saying is, good losers. This has given 
to all Britain her peculiar tone, her power in 



GEEMANY'S MADNESS 171 

adversity, her stamina. All this is rather the 
exception in Germany. When, in another sec- 
tion of this book, we said that the Germans had 
the real spirit of war and imperialism, we al- 
ways implied that their spirit is the right one 
for enterprises promising and giving fair re- 
sults. At the present moment we are speaking 
of periods of failure, and with regard to such 
periods we say that the Germans are consider- 
ably less well equipped than are the British. 
There is no victory of Zama without the force 
to stand the defeat of Cannae. 

Another great drawback for the Germans is 
the contemporary international situation re- 
garding a new imperialism. When Spain, Hol- 
land, or England started on their careers of 
colonising vast and fertile tracts of colonies, 
the other Powers in Europe or Asia interfered 
with them either not at all, or in a casual man- 
ner. Holland, although a tiny country, has still 
immense colonies, and used to have very much 
more. In those times a few bold captains were 
able to lay hold of immense districts in Asia, 
Africa, or America. At present this is all well- 
nigh impossible. Even in Asia the new and 
formidable power of the Japanese has arisen 
and would at once veto any violent change in 



172 GERMANY'S MADNESS 

the distribution of hitherto uncolonised coun- 
tries. The Colonial and imperial ambitions of 
the Germans have come in a very unpropitious 
moment. What formerly could be achieved by 
a Cortez, Pizarro, Drake, or Frobisher, accom- 
panied by a few gallant fellow adventurers, has 
now become a vast enterprise, involving hun- 
dreds of millions of money and hundreds of 
thousands of men. 

If the reader will carefully contemplate all 
that the preceding remarks imply, he will ar- 
rive at the conclusion that the Germans cannot 
possibly realise their imperial, and, as we have 
seen, indispensable ambitions, otherwise than 
by defeating the Power which both has the most 
valuable colonies, and is held to command the 
sea, or the access to such colonies. Tertium non 
datur; a third issue out of the difficulty does not 
exist. True, one might say that the French 
would perhaps, in exchange for Alsace and 
German Lorraine, cede the valuable and large 
isle of Madagascar to the Germans. Perhaps 
the French would. But it is certain that no 
ruler or minister in Germany could seriously 
think for one moment of proposing the retro- 
cession of Alsace and German Lorraine to the 
French. He might just as well propose the ces- 



GERMANY'S MADNESS 173 

sion of Cologne, Frankfort on the Main, or 
Berlin. 

Just as the Germans made their inner unity 
not by persuading one another to unite, as did 
the Scots and the English, but by great wars 
with Austria, on the one hand, and with France, 
on the other; even so they can acquire colonies 
not by direct conquest, but only by indirect wars 
with England or France. Being the central 
country in Europe, the Germans must neces- 
sarily use indirect means for their great policy, 
whether at home or abroad. For, on account 
of their central position, the surrounding 
Powers have always so strongly interfered with 
the Germans, that the latter could not secure 
tranquillity within otherwise than by establish- 
ing their superiority abroad. Against this in- 
exorable consequence of their central position 
there is no other remedy left. We have come 
to the strange but nevertheless true conclusion, 
that even the weak points of the Germans prac- 
tically force them to be aggressive. Their un- 
doubted strength prompts them to the same ac- 
tion that their undoubted drawbacks equally en- 
tail upon them. Several nations have, in the 
course of history, been in a similar position. 
It always ended — in one and the same way. 



PAET III 

THE AKGUMENT IN CONCLUSION 

We have now reached the end of our task. We 
have tried to place all the relevant facts of the 
German Question before the reader. Begin- 
ning with a statement of the inordinately over- 
reaching national vanity of the Germans, we 
admitted that their international position is one 
both full of promise and beset with most irritat- 
ing dangers. While constantly dwelling upon 
the swelled-head of the Germans, which, unre- 
mittingly stimulated by a host of their most 
popular writers, is constantly growing instead 
of decreasing, we dwelt with equal insistence on 
the real power and strength and value of the 
Germans. None but a malevolent jingo of Ber- 
lin can possibly take our work as one deliber- 
ately running down or reviling things and per- 
sons German. 

There is much to be admired in the Germans, 
and what they have done in the past has laid all 
the future generations under undying obliga- 
tions. But here we mainly consider the future. 

174 



GERMANY'S MADNESS 175 

We studied the past in order to foresee the 
future; just as we always study the present in 
order to understand more fully the past. In 
calling attention to German aspirations, to Ger- 
man ambitions, we mean to do a work of hon- 
esty, of political honesty. Such among the pub- 
lic men or writers of this country as go on de- 
claring to the people of Great Britain that the 
Germans harbour no hostile intentions against 
the British; that, in fact, the relations of the 
two countries and peoples are the best they 
can be; such people, we make bold to say, are 
the enemies of Great Britain. The true friend 
warns in advance ; it is the faddist who, out of 
sheer conceit, is unable to see the most palpable 
things, and accordingly does not warn his 
friend, and so ruins him. 

We are quite aware that in this country any 
enthusiasm or tragic earnestness is discounted 
with a cold sneer. Nor can we wonder that a 
nation who, alone of all European nations, re- 
mained, for centuries, practically unassailable, 
has preserved a coolness of nerve which is im- 
possible to Continental nations living under 
constant menace of ruin. But things have 
changed. England is no longer unassailable. 
Europe has now, instead of two fleets, namely 



176 GERMANY'S MADNESS 

the Britisli and the French, as there used to be 
before, no less than half-a-dozen big fleets, and 
several minor ones. The whole international, 
or inter-European, aspect and situation of Great 
Britain is thoroughly changed. She is, politic- 
ally, no longer an island. 

Only a few years ago many a Briton proudly 
talked of the *^ splendid isolation'' of Great 
Britain. Since then that isolation has been de- 
liberately given up, and entente is following 
entente. Politically, therefore, we repeat it, 
England is no longer an island. Nor is she one 
strategically, or from the standpoint of war. 
We need not here refer to the series of brilliant 
and suggestive articles of the Military Corre- 
spondent of The Times on the perfect feasible- 
ness of an invasion of this country. We simply 
submit, that a country, whether an island or no, 
that has no sufficient army of its own, is always 
exposed to invasion. 

Any country, no matter how large, may be 
compared to a big fortress. Much depends, no 
doubt, on the strength of the walls and ram- 
parts, bastions and towers. Yet the main force 
of resistance is in the garrison. Great Britain 
is the fortress; her navy is the equivalent of 
the walls and ramparts of that fortress. The 



GERMANY'S MADNESS 177 

national army of England is tlie garrison of the 
fortress. Tlie inference from all this is only 
one: The fortress of Great Britain cannot be 
declared to be in a state of safety, in that her 
garrison is far too weak for the purpose. The 
walls of Great Britain consist practically of 
about 100,000 seamen. That is far too little for 
a fortress of the extent of England. 

The reader is again reminded that hitherto 
the great and decisive naval battles of Great 
Britain have been fought in seas other than the 
Channel or the North Sea. In the whole of the 
eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, only two 
pitched sea-battles were fought by the British in 
the North Sea; one in 1781, off the Dogger 
Bank, between Parker and the Dutch Admiral 
Zouttman, ending in a draw; and the other in 
1797, when Duncan, with utmost effort, defeated 
the Dutch Admiral De Winter. All the great 
and decisive sea-battles were fought by the 
British thousands of miles away from Eng- 
land. 

The great naval war of the British in the near 
future will, on the other hand, be fought in the 
North Sea, and practically there alone. Any 
decisive advantage of the enemy exposes Eng- 
land at once to an invasion. 



178 OERMANY'S MADNESS 

Again we say that the Germans have no in- 
tention whatever to possess themselves of this 
country. Such an idea does not enter their 
minds. This, however, does not exclude a tem- 
porary invasion for the purpose of a huge in- 
demnity, or other advantages. Every school- 
boy knows that the Dutch Admiral, De Ruyter, 
entered the Medway in 1667, thanks to strategic 
advantages which he had secured in the North 
Sea, and threatened London for some time. 
The same thing came near happening in 1690, 
when the French Admiral, Tourville, after de- 
feating the Anglo-Dutch fleet off Beachy Head, 
made for the entrance of the Thames River. 
There is no reason to assume that such a thing 
could not happen again in our time. In war^ 
as in life, everything is possible. 

These, then, are the seminal factors of the 
whole problem: Here is a country, Germany, 
that having come as the last among the peoples 
bidding for imperialism and expansion, cannot 
hope to achieve much by attempts to spread its 
eagles on the Continent of Europe. It is there- 
fore driven, irremediably driven, to spread by 
sea-power. Like ancient Carthage, which could 
not expand into the interior of uninhabitable 
Africa, Germany too cannot seriously hope to 



GEEMANY'S MADNESS 179 

possess herself of much more territory on the 
fully occupied Continent of Europe, and is 
forced to spread by maritime power. However, 
Carthage met Kome, that is, a power well-knit 
and strongly organised on land, and very ca- 
pable on sea. The end was the downfall of Car- 
thage. Had Eome possessed only sea-power, 
Carthage might very well have defeated her. 
But Eome had land and sea-power. Given her 
efficient constitution and her twofold power, 
Eome could not be worsted in the long run. 
Everybody knows that Eome finally defeated 
Carthage by means of a land-battle fought on 
Carthaginian territory, at Zama. The Ger- 
mans, if victorious over the British fleet, can 
very well invade England, and hold it for some 
time. The British, with the present organisa- 
tion of their army, could never think of invad- 
ing one town of Germany. Is such a situation 
not threatening enough! Is it wise to leave 
one's enemy a possible advantage so great as 
to surpass by far any advantage one may have 
over him! 

Or, compare the possible losses of the Ger- 
mans in case of their defeat on sea, with those 
of the British in a similar case. The Germans 
would, in the first place, lose all their colonies. 



180 GERMANY ^S MADNESS 

In other words, they would lose what as yet is 
of little if any value to them. They would 
furthermore lose heavily in their large Trans- 
marine commerce. The British, on the other 
hand, would, in case of a naval disaster, lose 
practically everything. The indemnity which 
the Germans would exact, would be enormous, 
both in colonies and in money. Neither Jena 
nor Sedan could be compared in point of im- 
mensity of loss with a decisive naval victory of 
the Germans over the British fleet. It would 
be the catastrophe of modern times. 

Yet in the face of all these facts, there are 
still thousands and thousands of influential men 
in this country, who talk of the *' impossibility 
of war with Germany," of the ^^ peaceful and 
amicable inclinations" of the Germans. Must 
one really despair to convince the average 
Briton that wars between civilised nations do 
not depend on the peaceful or amicable inclina- 
tions of individuals'? Suppose that every Ger- 
man be filled with pure friendship for England. 
That would not in the least prevent him from 
going to war with Great Britain. He may love 
England and the English ; yet assuredly he must 
love his own interest and that of his country 
very much more intensely. Of passions, the 



GEEMANY'S MADNESS 181 

stronger one invariably has the upper hand. 
The Germans, as a nation, have never cared 
for home politics. Their individual indiffer- 
ence and absolute incapacity in that respect 
have always been so great, that, aided by the 
disintegrating pressure from outside Powers, 
they have to the present day not been able to 
unite into one homogeneous, great and un- 
divided polity. They still are twenty-six dif- 
ferent States united into an Empire. Home 
politics do not interest the German Burger, or 
burgess. It is quite different with *^ world- 
politics, ' ' as they call it in the Fatherland. Just 
because the average German leaves home-poli- 
tics to the officials and semi-officials, he reserves 
all his political ardour for '* world-politics,'' or 
for the hopes and tasks of Imperialism. Na- 
tions intensely absorbed in the building up of 
their home institutions, such as, at present, the 
Hungarians, or the Italians, do not take much 
stock in international policy. Vice versa, the 
Germans, having had all their home institutions 
mapped out for them by their rulers and min- 
isters, concentrate all their fervent interest on 
the sphere where there still is political activity 
on a grand scale, offering many a chance of big 
success to individual ambitionists. 



182 GERMANY'S MADNESS 

This imperialism, then, is the Great Passion 
of the Germans. They are, at present, where 
the English were in Elizabethan times. They 
burn with the Great Passion. Every one of 
them is brimful of it; and no power can stop 
or retard that mighty current. The enthusi- 
astic love which every German feels for the 
Kaiser is only another way of expressing his 
enthusiasm for that vast imperialism which the 
Kaiser loves to incarnate in his personality. 
Against such a mighty national sentiment, no 
mere friendship for other nations can prevail. 
Whatever, therefore, individual Germans may 
or may not say about the relations of England 
and Germany, this cannot in the least alter the 
forces driving the latter into antagonism to the 
former. 

Far more to the point; infinitely more con- 
sonant with the dignity, past and future prestige 
of Great Britain would it be if all men of lead- 
ing spirit, all preachers, teachers, statesmen, 
journalists, or thinkers of this country joined in 
bringing before the nation the necessity of 
preparations which, if properly made, would 
indeed retard, or eventually frustrate, any at- 
tempt on the part of Germany. To talk of uni- 
versal military service, even if it is done by 



GERMANY'S MADNESS 183 

Lord Roberts, is hateful to the majority of 
British citizens. Where the victor in so many 
battles can carry no conviction, we should be 
only foolishly presumptuous in trying to con- 
vince our readers. The facts of the near fu- 
ture will convince them. Nations are invari- 
ably kicked, and never persuaded, into reforms. 

Omitting, therefore, any lengthy discussion 
of this, the one potent means of securing last- 
ing peace between Great Britain and Germany, 
we only want to point out some evident teach- 
ings of history. 

The Germans, as we tried to show, are a 
Power both mighty and brittle. They are brit- 
tle, because they do not, and owing to their sys- 
tem, they cannot, have a rich supply of great 
personalities, whether military or political. 

From this it follows with deadly certainty, 
that a nation that wants to defeat the Germans, 
must cultivate just the sort of weapon in point 
of which the Germans are very deficient, that 
is, mighty, spontaneous personalities. The less 
the British nation will imitate the manner and 
method of war obtaining with the Germans, the 
more she is likely to worst them. 

If the Germans, in imitation of the British 
tendency to big units in sea war, go on build- 



184 GERMANY'S MADNESS 

ing Dreadnoughts of an ever-increasing size, the 
British ought to lay stress on lesser and more 
nimble units. If the system of the Germans 
breeds living machines, the British system ought 
to breed the broadest initiative of captains and 
officers. If Germany excels in both a strong 
navy and an exceedingly strong army. Great 
Britain ought to excel in an exceedingly strong 
navy and in a strong army. If Germany wants 
to attack England, England ought to attack her 
long before. 

In the same way, the Bagdad railway, which 
is practically a German enterprise, ought to bo 
counteracted by a British railway through 
Beluchistan and Persia. The whole of Great 
Britain's Asiatic policy ought to be based on 
the more than fair probability, that Eussia does 
not in the least plan a coup on India, as she has 
never planned it to this day. In the same line 
of political thought. Great Britain might with 
great advantage come to an agreement with 
Holland guaranteeing the contracting parties 
mutual help for the maintenance of their East- 
Indian possessions. The commonwealth of 
Australasia ought to be stimulated into the 
building of an efficient fleet, so as to be able to 



GERMANY'S MADNESS 185 

step in with migM in any conflict for Great 
Britain's Asiatic possessions. 

All this and many more measures are dic- 
tated by the actual facts of the international 
situation of Great Britain and Germany. For 
him who has studied History as a matter of 
real life, and not merely as a heap of musty 
documents, a description or precis of which en- 
ables one to get a certificate in an ^^exam,'' or 
to pose as an * ^ authority ' ' in University circles 
amongst pedants; for such a man it cannot be 
doubtful that, if Great Britain manages her 
cards with prudence, she must in the end force 
Germany to lower her flag. 

Empires are the products of the beginning or 
the end of great periods of history. Antiquity 
began and ended with Empires ; during its man- 
hood it knew only of intensely developed smaller 
States. Europe is in her manhood ; Africa and 
Asia are in their infancy. In Africa and Asia, 
therefore, Empires were still possible ; but they 
have long been made by the British, French, 
Russians, Dutch, and a few minor nations, such 
as the Belgians or Portuguese. To win new 
Empires in Asia is, since the rise of the mighty 
Japanese, quite impossible. To wrest old ones 



186 GERMANY'S MADNESS 

from their present possessors is feasible only if 
those old possessors persist in making blunder 
after blunder. 

If, then, we consider the international position 
in the light both of history and latter-day poli- 
tics, we arrive at a conclusion which is indeed a 
fearful mortification to the Germans, but never- 
theless a sober truth, provided the leading in- 
ternational Powers act according to the elemen- 
tary rules of sound politics. 

The conclusion is this : On the one hand, the 
Germans, for the reasons given all through the 
present work, are bound to strive for more ex- 
pansion, for Imperialism. They do so, they 
will do so, with even greater intensity. They 
are simply bound to do so. On the other hand, 
they cannot possibly establish a really valuable 
new Empire, if the old Imperial Powers take 
proper measures because they come too late in 
the historic day. 

Empires are not made where, when, and by 
whom it pleases. Had Alexander the Great 
been born a hundred years before his actual 
date, he could never have defeated the Hellenes, 
and therefore, lacking Hellenic help, he could 
not have defeated the Persians. Napoleon 
would have done nothing without the French 



GERMANY'S MADNESS 187 

Revolution. It was that extraordinary event 
that gave birth to extraordinary military tal- 
ents, which in turn helped Napoleon to win the 
battles of Rivoli, Marengo, Austerlitz, and Jena. 
The Germans want to make a vast Empire with 
the help of a strict system, and out of sheer in- 
tention and resolution, without any help from a 
great historic event in their favour. 

Had the British lost South Africa in the late 
Boer War, which, as Col. F. N. Maude himself 
has pointed out, was far from an impossibility 
in the first six weeks of the war (see The Times 
Literary Supplement of May 31, 1907), then 
indeed the loss of British prestige would have 
constituted, for Germany, one of those historic 
events that enable other Powers to step in and 
achieve new imperial triumphs. But given that 
new Empires are, for the present, unhistoric, 
not to say unnatural; given that the Germans, 
however so badly they need such an Empire, 
ought not to be able to acquire it, so long as 
Great Britain follows the clear dictates of her 
past and her present ; there remains nothing for 
the Germans but to give up the dream of Pan- 
Germanism. 

Should Great Britain, misled by men who 
have never made a serious study of either his- 



188 GERMANY'S MADNESS 

tory or of the Continent in its present configura- 
tion, misread the signs of the time, and instead 
of meeting the inevitable aggressiveness of the 
Germans by due preparations, continue to treat 
the German Question lightly, or ignore it alto- 
gether, then indeed the dream of Pan-German- 
ism will not remain a dream. 

By a similar misreading of Continental poli- 
tics, England lost in the eighteenth century her 
vast American colonies. Of course, the average 
Briton is not at all aware of this broad historic 
fact. He thinks that the Yankees *' wrested" 
their country from the British. Nothing is less 
true. The loss of the present United States 
was caused, as we have shown in a separate 
work, almost exclusively by the foolishly pro- 
voked hostility of France, Holland, and Spain 
against Great Britain. The British fleet was 
worsted by the French fleet, both in America 
and in India, and consequently the American 
colonies were lost. 

Should the signs of the time again be mis- 
read, then there is no reason for the Germans 
to despair of the success of their vast ambi- 
tions. They bide their time ; they want to wait 
for a moment when Great Britain will commit 
blunders similar to those that caused the loss 



GERMANY'S MADNESS 189 

of the present United States, a loss greater tlian 
any Empire ever sustained. Such blunders of 
their adversary are in reality the foundation of 
their policy. They began the war with France 
because they positively knew that France was 
not properly prepared. They mean to do the 
same thing with Great Britain. 

It is in the hopes of rousing the British nation 
to this danger, that the present little book is 
written. The Germans, the author holds, must 
expand, will expand, but ought not to be able to 
establish a new Empire at the expense of the 
British Empire, as long as Great Britain, fully 
cognisant of the imminent danger of Germany's 
Swelled Head, prepares for the conflict both 
from the military and naval standpoint, let 
alone by means of judicious diplomacy. Late 
comers must be satisfied with crumbs; if they 
get more, it is only because there is something 
radically wrong with the people who preceded 
them. 



EPILOGUE 

That Dr. Eeich^s conception of the Kaiser ^s 
objects and the temper of the German people 
was substantially correct has been proved be- 
yond the shadow of a doubt. The Kaiser has 
fired the mine which he laid, and his action has 
been applauded by the majority of his subjects. 
We propose to supplement the evidence col- 
lected by Dr. Reich. His book was written un- 
der the impression made by the Kaiser's violent 
attitude towards France on the question of 
Morocco. Let us observe the diplomatic ac- 
tivities of William II., both before and after 
that date. Never in the history of the world 
has there been a more striking exhibition of in- 
sane wickedness and cunning than the German 
Emperor's. 

AN IMPERIAL MACHIAVELLI 

The machinations of German diplomacy lay 
at the back of the trouble in the Far East which 
culminated in the Russo-Japanese War. Wil- 
liam II. had proclaimed that the Yellow Races 
were a peril to European civilisation, and he 

190 



GEEMANY'S MADNESS 191 

had embodied the idea in a poorly executed 
picture presented to the Czar. After the Chi- 
nese-Japanese War, Germany, with Russia and 
France, deprived the Japanese of Port Arthur. 
Two years later (1897) the Germans began the 
dismemberment of China by seizing Kiao-Chau, 
and, immediately afterwards. Port Arthur was 
occupied by Eussia. The occupation of Port 
Arthur by the Eussians was bound, sooner or 
later, to cause hostilities between the Czar and 
the Mikado, and the astute soldiers at Berlin 
could have had little doubt in their own minds 
as to the result of a struggle between the highly 
efficient and patriotic Japanese Army and Navy 
and the Eussian land and marine forces in the 
Far East. 

By encouraging the Czar to embark on the 
Eusso- Japanese War — the Eussians received an 
assurance that they would not be attacked by 
Germany during the continuance of the Man- 
churian campaign — the Kaiser and his ministers 
were an efficient cause of the War, and of the 
subsequent risings in Eussia. When the Kaiser 
visited Tangier on March 31, 1905, and inter- 
fered in the settlement of Morocco, the Eussian 
armies were retiring before Japanese troops 
trained by Germans. The sinister policy of 



192 GERMANY'S MADNESS 

Germany towards Russia had been successful. 

A similar policy had been pursued by Ger- 
many towards the British Empire. The Boers 
had been encouraged to believe that they could 
count on German support if they endeavoured 
to subjugate the British in South Africa. It 
will be remembered that in the Eighties of the 
last century, Kriiger had been entertained at 
Berlin by Bismarck, and it must have been with 
the deliberate intention of deceiving the Boers 
and hastening a South African War that the 
Kaiser despatched his telegram to the Boer 
President. ^^I sincerely congratulate you,'' the 
imperial Machiavelli cabled, ^ * that, without mak- 
ing any appeal for the help of foreign Powers, 
you have succeeded, with your people and your 
own strength, in repulsing the armed bands 
which have troubled the peace of your land. ' ' 

The Kaiser had, however, not the slightest 
wish to assist the Russians against the Japan- 
ese, or the Boers against the English. At the 
interview, a report of which was published by 
the Daily Telegraph on October 28, 1908, he 
even claimed to have prevented Russia and 
France from attacking us during the Boer War, 
and to have sketched out the plan of campaign 
executed by Lords Roberts and Kitchener ! 



GEEMANY'S MADNESS 193 

Assuming — it is a large assumption — that 
these statements are true, we are not in his 
debt. Prince Von Biilow, his Ex-Chancellor, 
has kindly explained his master's motives. 
*^ Among the French, '^ says the Prince, ^Hhe 
deeply rooted national hatred against the Ger- 
mans would speedily and completely have ousted 
the momentary ill-feeling against England as 
soon as we had definitely committed ourselves 
to a course hostile to her [Great Britain's] in- 
terests. . . . During those years we were occu- 
pied in founding our sea power by building the 
German navy, and, even in the event of [Brit- 
ish] defeat in the South African War, it was 
possible to stifle our sea power in the embryo." ^ 

Thus, without the loss of a Pomeranian 
grenadier, the Kaiser's iniquitous diplomacy 
had crippled Eussia, endangered the French 
savings invested in Eussia, saddled Great 
Britain with an enormous debt, and sacrificed 
the lives and fortunes of innumerable Eussians, 
Japanese, Britons, and Boers. 

1 Imperial Germany, by Prince Von Biilow, translated by 
Marie A. Lewenz, M.A. (Cassell & Co.), pp. 31-2. 



194 GERMANY'S MADNESS 

A BID FOR MAHOMETAlSr SUPPORT 

Another blow aimed at the British Empire 
may yet be successful and lead to the massacre 
of all Europeans (including Germans) isolated 
among Mahometans. 

Two years after cabling to Kriiger — in 1898 
— William II. paid a visit to the Sultan of 
Turkey, Abdul Hamid, who had been extirpat- 
ing the Armenians. From Damascus he 
thanked that miscreant for his hospitality. 
*'May the Sultan," he said, ''and the three hun- 
dred million Mussulmans scattered over the 
earth be assured that the German Emperor will 
always be their friend. ' ' ^ Since 1883 the Turk- 
ish Army — once trained by Moltke — had been 
reorganised by the celebrated German strate- 
gist. Von der Goltz. As the majority of Mus- 
sulmans live in the British Empire, and large 
numbers of them in French colonies, the 
Kaiser's object in courting the Mussulmans was 
obvious. His theatrical pilgrimage to the Holy 
Land in 1898 gave him an opportunity of in- 
specting the country through which a German- 

2 Germany and the Qerman Emperor, by George H. Perris 
(Melrose), p. 410; Imperial Germany, by Prince Von BUlow, 
p. 84. 



GERMANY'S MADNESS 195 

Turkish Army would marcli on the Suez Canal 
and Egypt, while the Bagdad Railway, permis- 
sion for the construction of which was secured 
by German financiers in 1899, was probably de- 
signed to enable him to throw troops into India 
where he doubtless hoped to find support from 
the Mahometans and Bengalese. 

The Bagdad Railway is a continuation of the 
German Anatolian Railway, which had been 
constructed earlier. Russia, defeated and in 
the throes of a Revolution, it was expected, 
would not be able to prevent Germany, Austria- 
Hungary and Turkey, between them, from 
coercing the Balkan States, and, but for the for- 
tunate defeat of the Turkish Army and the re- 
vival of Russia, German troops might to-day be 
on the shores of the Persian Gulf and in Egypt. 
Writing in October, 1911, General Von Bern- 
hardi observed that *^ Turkey — the predominant 
Power of the Near East — is of paramount im- 
portance to us [the Germans]. She is our nat- 
ural ally. . . . Turkey is . . . the only Power 
which can threaten England's position in 
Egypt, and thus menace the short sea-route and 
the land communications to India. "^ 

3 Germany and the 'Next War, by General Friedrich von Bern-, 
hardi, translated by Allen H. Powles (Edward Arnold), p. 99. 



196 GERMANY'S MADNESS 

The short sea-route to India would be threat- 
ened by Turkey; the next step was to obtain a 
position from which Germany could command 
our long sea-route. If she could obtain ports on 
the coast of Morocco she might cut both arteries. 
The people of Morocco, also, are Mahometans. 
Consequently, in 1905, the Kaiser suddenly as- 
sumed the role of protector of Morocco while 
Russia, France's ally, was embarrassed by the 
war with Japan. If his fleet had been power- 
ful enough, he would presumably have followed 
up his intervention by overt acts of hostility. 
As it was, he had to be content with driving M. 
Delcasse from the French Foreign Office, and 
procuring the Algeciras Conference. 

The Russian Baltic fleet was destroyed by the 
Japanese at the Battle of Tsu-Shima (May 27- 
28, 1905) ; on June 6, M. Delcasse resigned, and, 
on the same day. Count Von Bulow was created 
a Prince. It was after j not before Sedan that 
Bismarck had been promoted to the same rank. 
The services for which Von Biilow was re- 
warded may be surmised. From the standpoint 
of a disciple of Machiavelli, Frederick the 
Great, Napoleon, and Bismarck, the policy to- 
wards Russia, the British Empire, and France 
had been masterly. 



GERMANY'S MADNESS 197 

RUSSIA FLOUTED 

So far, the Kaiser, judged by Atheist and 
Anti-Social standards, had been very success- 
ful. At the Algeciras Conference (1906), no 
doubt, he discovered that the United States and 
Italy, the third member of the Triple Alliance, 
were not prepared to promote German ambi- 
tions. Nevertheless he had triumphantly as- 
serted Germany's right to be consulted in the 
Morocco settlement, and he had been supported 
by Austria-Hungary. ^ ^ You showed yourself, ' ' 
said the Kaiser, addressing his ally, ^'a brilliant 
second in the tourney, and can reckon on the like 
service from me on a similar occasion. ' ' 

This occasion was not long in coming. In 
1907, at the Guildhall, William II. assured the 
British Public that his aim was above all *'the 
preservation of peace." But in 1908, at his 
instigation or with his connivance, Austria- 
Hungary annexed Bosnia-Herzegovina, two 
Turkish provinces held by her in trust under the 
Berlin Treaty. It was at the suggestion of the 
late Marquess of Salisbury that Austria-Hun- 
gary had received a mandate to administer this 
territory. 

The annexation was, of course, a challenge to 



198 GERM ANY 'S MADNESS 

Servia and Russia. The Kaiser, by threats, 
obliged Russia to swallow the insult. To use 
his own histrionic phrase, he ''took his stand in 
shining armour'' by the side of the Emperor 
Francis Joseph. 

It was a few days after the annexation of 
Bosnia-Herzegovina (October 7, 1908) that the 
interview with him, already referred to, ap- 
peared in the Daily Telegraph (October 28, 
1908). In this interview he alleged that one of 
his dearest wishes ''was to live on the best 
terms with England, though the prevailing sen- 
timent among large portions of the middle" 
(why not the upper!) "and lower classes of his 
own people was not friendly to England. ' ' On 
February 17 of the same year he had written 
privately to Lord Tweedmouth, then First Lord 
of the Admiralty, with a view to influencing our 
naval programme. "Lord Esher," he is re- 
ported to have written, "had better attend to 
the drains at Windsor and leave alone matters 
which he does not understand." Lord Esher 
had not accepted the Kaiser's promises at their 
face value. 

Not unnaturally, the interview in the Daily 
Telegraph aroused a storm of indignation 
among the Germans. The manuscript, it was 



GERMANY'S MADNESS 199 

explained to them, had been sent by the Em- 
peror to the Chancellor who alleged that he had 
not read it. Probably to deceive the peace- 
lovers in England and elsewhere, the Kaiser 
was publicly reproved by Prince Von Biilow. 
It was to the advantage of the plotters in Ber- 
lin to make us believe that the German had be- 
come a fettered despotism. 



Having humiliated Russia, the Kaiser again 
attempted to humiliate France. In July, 1911, 
the Panther was despatched to Agadir and the 
Algeciras settlement of the Morocco question 
reopened. To escape from war, France was 
obliged to surrender — it is true in return for 
the Protectorate of Morocco — a large part of 
her territory on the Congo, and, but for the (to 
the Germans) unexpected firmness of the Brit- 
ish Government, it is probable that Germany 
would have acquired a naval base in Morocco, 
menacing our Mediterranean and West African 
trade routes. The arrangement with France 
after the coup d' Agadir will, perhaps, be 
marked as the last triumph of German diplo- 
macy. 



200 GERMANY'S MADNESS 



BALKAN TROUBLE AND GERMAN POLICY 

The Kaiser's murderous friend, the Sultan 
Abdul, had been deposed by the Young Turks in 
1909, but German officers were still drilling the 
Turkish army, and its armaments were being 
made in Germany. After the Agadir incident, 
Italy declared war on Turkey — ''in direct op- 
position," says General Von Bernhardi, ''to the 
interests of the Triple Alliance" — and con- 
quered Tripoli. "This undertaking," pursues 
the General, "brought her to the brink of a war 
with Austria, which, as the supreme Poiuer in 
the Balkan Peninsula, can never tolerate the en- 
croachment of Italy into those regions. ' ' ^ The 
next year (1912) the Turkish Army, despite its 
German training and German weapons, was de- 
cisively defeated in nearly every encounter with 
the Bulgarians, Servians, Greeks and Montene- 
grins. The Turks failed to exhibit "the high 
military qualities ' ' ^ with which Von Bernhardi 
had credited them. Had it not been for the 
folly of the Bulgarians in quarrelling with the 
Servians and Greeks, the German aims, so far 
as the Balkans were concerned, might have had 

* Germany and the 'Next War, p. 86 : the italics are ours. 
6 Ibid., p. 14L 



GERMANY'S MADNESS 201 

to be postponed indefinitely. There is strong 
ground for suspicion that Bulgaria, ruled by a 
German prince, was thrust on Servia by the 
Germans and Austrians. 

The second of the Balkan wars (though it 
ended in the triumph of Servia, Greece and 
Roumania), by further exhausting Servia, en- 
couraged Germany and Austria-Hungary to 
pursue their aggressive policy. There can now 
be no manner of doubt that last year Germany 
was preparing to shake *Hhe mailed fist" at 
Russia and her Allies. The Kaiser, in 1913, 
raised a huge war-benevolence from his sub- 
jects, a considerable part of which, it may be 
noted, was allocated to the air-fleet. 

THE GERMANS VERSUS THE WORLD 

We come now to the diplomatic intercourse 
immediately antecedent to the present war. 
Was war deliberately planned for 1914? It is 
open to doubt. ^^Let it be the task of our 
diplomacy," General Von Bernhardi adjured 
his superiors, ^*so to shuffle the cards that we 
may be attacked by France, for then there would 
be reasonable prospect that Russia for a time 
would remain neutral. ' ' ^ He remarked else- 

6 Germany and the Next War, p. 290. 



202 GERMANY'S MADNESS 

where (p. 296) that the Agadir Convention was 
*^as liable to revision as the Algeciras treaty, 
and, indeed, offers, in this respect, the advan- 
tage that it creates new opportunities of friction 
with France. ' ' According to him, ^ * the German 
Government, from important reasons which 
conld not be discussed," had in 1911 ** consid- 
ered it expedient to avoid, under present condi- 
tions, a collision with England or France at any 
cost'' (p. 294). It is significant that our Am- 
bassador at St. Petersburg telegraphed on the 
30th July last, to Sir Edward Grey, that the 
*' German ambassador had a second interview 
with Minister for Foreign Affairs at 2 a.m., 
when former completely hrohe down on seeing 
that war was inevitable. He appealed to M. 
Sazonof," added Sir G. Buchanan, 'Ho make 
some suggestion which he could telegraph to 
German Government as a last hope. ' ' '^ 

We learn also from another despatch that, in 
the opinion of the Russian Minister for Foreign 
Affairs, ' ' Germany was unfortunate in her rep- 
resentatives in Vienna and St. Petersburg; the 
former was a violent Russophobe, who had 
urged Austria on, the latter had reported to his 

7 Correspondence respecting the European Crisis {Parliamen- 
tary White Paper No. 6, 1914, Price 9d.), p. 53. 



GERMANY'S MADNESS 203 

Government that Eussia would never go to 
war. ' ' ^ 

The domestic difficulties of Great Britain, 
France and Russia, however, decided the tiger 
at Berlin to spring. 

The arming of Ulster and the Nationalists, 
the refusal of the army officers in Ireland to exe- 
cute the British Cabinet's orders, the resigna- 
tion of their posts by Sir John French and other 
eminent officers, the undoubted strength of the 
Socialists and Syndicalists in Great Britain and 
the apparent strength of the Peace-at-any-price 
Party among us seemed to afford to the mater- 
ialists at Potsdam a reasonable hope that we 
might accept their ^ infamous proposal" to re- 
main neutral while Belgium and France were 
being crushed and despoiled of their colonies. 

Moreover, if Von Bernhardi's book reflects 
the workings of the military brains of the Prus- 
sian and Austro-Hungarian Armies, the British 
fleet has alone been taken into account by the 
German strategists. Our Colonial militia, he 
remarks (p. 137), '^can be completely ignored 
so far as concerns any European theatre of 
war," and *4t is very questionable whether the 
English army is capable of effectively acting 

8 Ibid., p. 71. 



204 GERMANY'S MADNESS 

on the offensive against Continental European 
troops'' (p. 121). Though he does not criticise 
the Belgian Army, we surmise, from his ob- 
servation that Holland ^^ would easily yield to 
a German invasion" (p. 144), that no resistance 
was anticipated — by him at all events — from 
Belgium. 

France, also, to superficial observers, ap- 
peared this year to be drifting towards a Revo- 
lution. The murder of M. Calmette and the 
croakings of an unpatriotic Senator as to the 
unpreparedness of the Army may have led the 
Germans astray. As for Russia: it may well 
have been believed that she had not recovered 
from her war with Japan and from the Revolu- 
tion which was still smouldering. 

To personages like the Kaiser and the Crown 
Prince the political situation appeared too 
tempting. The German Crown Prince, if 
gauged by his utterances, loves bloodshed and 
brutality, and the Kaiser gives the impression 
that he firmly believes himself to be a super- 
Napoleon. '^I cannot stand him any longer," 
said the grim realist, Bismarck, ** ... I can- 
not make genuflexions, or crouch under the table 
like a dog. He wants to break with Russia. 
... I cannot tack on as a tail to my career the 



GERMANY'S MADNESS 205 

failures of arbitrary and inexperienced self- 
conceit for which I should be held responsible.'' 

The Kaiser's self-conceit is the primary cause 
of the war; and, as Mr. F. W. Wile in his article 
in the Daily Mail of the 14th of August points 
out, the treacherous inspection of our armament 
firms made by the head of the firm of Krupp 
and his expert between June 14 and 23 — i.e. he- 
fore the murder of the heir to the throne of Aus- 
tria-Hungary — must have been inspired by the 
Kaiser. 

^^ Although I am not able to verify it," tele- 
graphed our ambassador at Vienna to Sir Ed- 
ward Grey on the 30th of July, ''I have private 
information that the German ambassador knew 
the text of the Austrian ultimatum to Servia 
before it was despatched, and telegraphed it to 
the German Emperor."^ The following pas- 
sage from a telegram sent by Sir H. Rumbold 
from Berlin to Sir Edward Grey is also worth 
noting, *^ Emperor returns suddenly to-night, 
and Under-Secretary of State for Foreign 
Affairs says that Foreign Office regret this step, 
which was taken on His Majesty's own initia- 
tive." ^^ 

9 Correspondence respecting the European Crisis, p. 52. 
10 Ibid., p. 21. 



206 GERMANY'S MADNESS 

Admiral Mahan pronounces that the Kaiser's 
absence from Berlin at the opening of the crisis 
was a mere ruse of war. After the ^ infamous 
proposal" made to Great and Greater Britain, 
it is impossible to give William II. the benefit 
of the doubt. 

THE ETHICS AND OPINIONS OF WILLIAM II. 

The Kaiser has provoked millions of men to 
kill millions of other men. Owing to him, in- 
numerable women and children will be murdered 
or die of starvation, and the products of the 
labour of countless human beings destroyed or 
wasted. Already some of his subjects have dis- 
covered this. The committee of the German 
Humanity League, Berlin, have sent to the Brit- 
ish Humanity League a document in which he is 
characterised as ^'the uncurbed tyrant, sur- 
rounded by parasites, now directing the most 
desperate, devilish, and selfish campaign ever 
waged against humanity"; as ^^the despot 
whose insatiable egotism is drenching Europe 
with the blood of its workers and wage-earners ' ' 
(Times, Aug. 15, 1914). 

The Prussian statesman Stein called Napo- 
leon **the great criminal," but Napoleon had 
this excuse, that he issued from the French 



GERMANY'S MADNESS 207 

Revolution, that he was a man of vast ability 
and that, in the existing condition of things, his 
reforms — and he made many and useful re- 
forms — had to be forced on mankind at the point 
of the bayonet. One wonders what epithet 
Stein or, say, Kant would have applied to Wil- 
liam II. and his councillors ! That the Kaiser 's 
ethics are peculiar may be gathered from his 
address to the German soldiers despatched to 
China in 1900. 

As reported by the Bremen Weser Zeitung 
he said: — 

''When you meet the foe you will defeat 
him. No quarter will he given, no prison- 
ers will he taken. Let all ivho fall into your 
hands he at your mercy.. .Just as the Huns a 
thousand years ago, under the leadership of 
Etzel (Attila) gained a reputation in virtue of 
ivhich they still live in historical tradition, so 
may the name of Germany hecome known in 
such a manner in China that no Chinaman will 
ever again even dare to look askance at a Ger- 
man.'' {Times, July 30, 1900, p. 5.) 

The reference to Attila was commonly sup- 
pressed, but the rest of the quotation was cir- 
culated on postcards throughout Germany. 
{Times, Aug. 11, 1900, p. 4.) 



208 GERMANY'S MADNESS 

Two days later, the modern Attila preached 
a sermon on board the Hohenzollern. 

^'We will mobilise/' he is reported by the 
Kreuz Zeitung to have said, ^'not only battalions 
of warriors, but also a holy force of supplicants. 
And there is much that we have to beg and pray 
for on behalf of our brethren who are going 
forth to fight. They are to be the strong arm 
that is to chastise the assassins. They are to 
be the mailed fist that is to strike into the midst 
of these wild deeds." {Times, Aug. 3, 1900, 
p. 4.) 

The Kaiser is not more tender to his own sub- 
jects than to the Chinese. ^^It may happen, 
though God forbid," he told some recruits at 
Potsdam on November 23, 1891, ''that you 7nay 
have to fire on your own parents or brothers. 
Prove your fidelity then by your sacrifice.^' ^^ 
Whether he believes in a God is a moot point. 
On another occasion he said to some soldiers, 
''You must all have only one will, and it is 
mine; there is only one law, and it is mine." ^^ 

Of the nauseating doses of flattery which the 
Emperor has administered to his subjects here 
are a few samples: — 

11 Germany and the German Emperor, sup. cit., p. 391. 

12 Ibid., p. 390. 



GERMANY'S MADNESS 209 

(1) ^^The German people are the salt of the 
earth.'' 

(2) **To us Germans great ideals have be- 
come permanent possessions, whereas to other 
peoples they have been, more or less, lost." 

( 3 ) ' ^ Far stretches our speech over the ocean, 
far the flight of our science and exploration ; no 
work in the domain of new discovery, no scien- 
tific idea but is first tested by us and then 
adopted by other nations. This is the world- 
rule the German spirit strives for. ' ' 

(4) ^'Our German people will be the granite 
block on which the good God may complete His 
work of civilising the world. Then will be real- 
ised the word of the poet who said that the world 
will one day be cured by the German character. ' ' 

(5) ^^Berlinese sculpture has reached a de- 
gree of perfection that the Renaissance would 
scarcely surpass." 

THE INFLUENCE OF BISMAKCK 

One would need the pen of Voltaire to por- 
tray the Kaiser. His sole excuses are that 
when a boy he came under the influence of the 
cynical Bismarck, and that his conceptions of 
Germany and War are shared by a large num- 
ber of semi-civilised Germans. Let Bismarck 



210 GERMANY ^S MADNESS 

himself describe how he tampered with the Ems 
telegram and produced the Franco-German 
War. 

^^ Having decided to resign'' (the grandfather 
of the Kaiser was, comparatively speaking, a 
humane man and wished, if possible, to avoid 
a war with France, and Bismarck wanted to 
resign if there was no war) ^4n spite of the 
remonstrances which Roon made against it, I 
invited him and Moltke to dine with me alone. 
. . . During our conversation I was informed 
that a telegram from Ems . . . was being de- 
ciphered. When the copy was handed to me it 
showed that Abeken had drawn up and signed 
the telegram at His Majesty's command, and I 
read it out to my guests, tvhose dejection tvas so 
great that they turned away from food and 
drink. ... I put a few questions to Moltke as 
to the extent of our preparations. . . . He an- 
swered that if there was to be war he expected 
no advantage to us by deferring the outbreak. 
... I made use of the royal authorisation com- 
municated to me through Abeken, to publish the 
contents of the telegram, and, in the presence of 
my two guests, I reduced the telegram by strik- 
ing out words, but without adding or altering. 
. . . After I had read out the concentrated edi- 



GERMANY'S MADNESS 211 

tion . . . Moltke remarked: *Now it has a dif- 
ferent ring : it sounded before like a parley ; now 
it is like a flourish in answer to a challenge. ' I 
went on to explain: * If I at once communicate 
the text . . . not only to the newspapers, but 
also by telegraph to all our Embassies, it will 
be known in Paris before midnight, and . . . 
will have the effect of a red rag upon the Gallic 
bull.'' ^3 

Bismarck had a patriotic reason for his con- 
duct in sub-editing the telegram — Napoleon III, 
and Francis Joseph were undoubtedly prepar- 
ing to attack Prussia — but it was an abominable 
action on his part to reveal later the fraudulent 
method by which he provoked the war. By do- 
ing so he destroyed any moral justification the 
Germans had for retaining Alsace-Lorraine, and 
he poisoned the minds of the present generation 
of Germans. And he did it merely to gratify 
his hatred for the Kaiser ! If one of the fore- 
most of Prussian patriots behaved in this cyni- 
cal and selfish way, what can the world expect 
from the average Prussian officer and bureau- 
crat? 

13 Bismarck, his Reflections and Reminiscences, translated 
under the supervision of A. J. Butler, late Fellow of Trinity 
College, Cambridge, pp. 95-100. 



212 GERMANY'S MADNESS 

Englishmen will have read with pitying 
amusement the vapourings of the Anglo-German 
Houston Chamberlain (see pp. 11-14, 37-39). 
It may interest them to know that his theories 
are merely a development of some table-talk of 
Bismarck reported by his jackal, Busch. * ^ The 
Germans,'' said the Man of Blood and Iron, 
**the Germanic race is, so to speak, the male 
principle throughout Europe — the fructifying 
principle. The Celtic and Slav peoples repre- 
sent the female sex. . . . The Revolution of 
1789 was the overthrow of the German element 
by the Celtic." ^^ 

PKUSSIAN ATHEISM 

Bismarck was primarily a civilian. Views 
akin to those held by him appear in magnified 
forms in the writings of German soldiers. Be- 
low are the reflections of the late Count Yorck 
von Wartenburg, Colonel of the General Staff 
of the Prussian Army, on Napoleon's horrible 
order to his Adjutant-General *Ho convey all 
the gunners and other Turks who were captured 
at Jaffa with arms in their hands to the sea- 
shore, and have them shot, taking care that 

14 Bismarck, Some Secret Pages of His History, by Busch, I. 
526-7. 



GERMANY'S MADNESS 213 

none escape/' — an order rightly denounced by 
every Christian historian. 

*^In the eyes of mere didactic historical 
writers," said Count Von Wartenburg, '^this 
deed may appear horrible and revolting, but 
practical military history must not consider it 
as such. ... If such an act is necessary for the 
safety of one 's army, it is not only justified, but 
its repetition in any future war will be advisa- 
ble, and no convention could alter this fact. ' ' 

Comment on such comments is superfluous. 
As Mr. Belloc remarks, ^'Prussia is . . . Athe- 
ist. Her Atheism has profoundly penetrated 
the private morals of her people. It has not 
only penetrated, it has permeated the mind of 
her rulers. ' ' 

Again: the ex-trainer of the Turks, Field- 
Marshal Von der Goltz, assures us that ^Svars 
are the fate of mankind, the inevitable destiny 
of nations," and that ^inexorability and seem- 
ingly hideous callousness are among the attri- 
butes necessary to him who would achieve great 
things in war. In the case of the general there 
is only one crime for which history never par- 
dons him, and that is — defeat."^^ 

15 The Nation in Arms, by Baron Colmar Von der Goltz, 
translated by Philip A. Ashworth (pp. 470 and 79). 



214 GERMANY'S MADNESS 

One of the greatest American generals in the 
North and South War said that war was 
* * Hell, ' ' and Napoleon himself, if Segur is to be 
trusted, considered it to be ^^a game of barba- 
rians," the art of which consisted in being 
stronger than the enemy at a given point. The 
language of Von der Goltz, Von Wartenburg 
and the Kaiser takes one back to the days of the 
Thirty Years' War, of Timour, of Attila or of 
the Assyrians. 

GERMANS AND MILITARISM 

The writer of these lines was a few days ago 
in Switzerland, living on the most friendly 
terms with several Germans, among them two 
frank and kind-hearted youths who spent much 
of their time amusing some French children. 
Both of these lads were suddenly summoned to 
join, one the German Fleet, the other the Ger- 
man Army. Among the writer's friends has 
been a German of vast intelligence, extraordi- 
nary modesty, and unaffected kindliness. How 
many among us have had similar experiences! 
That a well-educated people, hospitable and 
fond of family life, should be used as his jemmy 
by the strange intelligence who has pronounced 
Count Zeppelin to be *Hhe greatest man of the 



GERMANY 'S MADNESS 215 

century'' is a tragedy unequalled in the world's 
history. 

The monsters who have made this War have 
taken the fullest advantage of the enormous and 
portentous superiority possessed to-day by the 
armed over the unarmed man, and also of the 
facilities afforded by the printing-press to 
stimulate the vanity, fears, and hatreds of 
human beings. The barbarous behaviour of the 
Prussian officers in Alsace-Lorraine and now in 
Belgium, the tales of horror which, from time 
to time, have reached us from the German 
Colonies, show the nature of the tyranny which 
the Prussian camarilla is seeking to impose on 
the white and coloured races. If Prussia were 
to succeed, it is probable that the institution of 
slavery would be revived. The friends of the 
Turks and condoners of the Armenian mas- 
sacres would have no compunction in coercing 
men to satisfy their needs and unnatural ca- 
prices. ^'England," observes General Von 
Bernhardi, ^'committed the unpardonable 
blunder, from her point of view, of not sup- 
porting the Southern States in the American 
War of Secession." 1^ That the Southern 
States wished to preserve and extend their 

16 Germany and the Next War, p. 92. 



216 GERMANY ^S MADNESS 

*^ domestic institution'' of slavery ought not, of 
course, to have deterred us ! 

At the trial of Dr. Peters, the High Commis- 
sioner for German East Africa, who, inter alia, 
had flogged and executed a woman, the Disci- 
plinary Court at Berlin observed: ^^With re- 
gard to the flogging of the women, it may be 
admitted that flogging is a customary punish- 
ment for women as well as for men in Africa. ' ' 
General Von Liebert, ex-Governor of the prov- 
ince, gave evidence and remarked that *4n 
Africa it is impossible to get on without 
cruelty,'' and that the condemnation of Dr. 
Peters (he lost his post) was ^^a stain and dis- 
grace upon German justice and the German peo- 
pjg >> 17 rjij^jg general was a member of the 
Reichstag and President of the Anti-Socialist 
League. 

Rightly regarded, the war against Germany is 
a war for the liberation of the German nation, 
and the sooner that we make that clear to them 
the better. In the Napoleonic War, the Allies de- 
clared that they were waging war on Napoleon 
alone, and in the Franco-German War the 
Prussian rulers — but falsely — alleged that their 
enemy was Napoleon III. and not the French 

17 The Times, July 1, 1907. 



GERMANY'S MADNESS 217 

people. The mass of the Germans, it cannot be 
too often repeated, have been grossly deceived 
by their Government, and by most of their Pro- 
fessors and Publicists. If any one doubts this, 
let him procure General Von Bernhardi's 
classic; a cheap edition of the translation has 
been issued by Mr. Edward Arnold. From that 
amazingly candid work we append some ex- 
tracts. 

(i) ^^The German people'' is ^Hhe great- 
est civilised people known to history" 
(p. 6). 

If SO, their behaviour is curious. ** Gentle- 
men, ' ' said the German Chancellor on August 4 
to the Reichstag, 'Sve are now in a state of 
necessity, and necessity knows no law! Our 
troops have occupied Luxemburg, and perhaps 
are already on Belgian soil. Gentlemen, that 
is contrary to the dictates of international 
law. . . . The wrong — I speak openly — that we 
are committing we will endeavour to make good 
as soon as our military goal has been reached. 
Anybody who is threatened, as we are threat- 
ened, and is fighting for his highest possessions, 
can have only one thought — how he is to hack 
his way through. ' ' 



218 GERMANY'S MADNESS 

Germany was supporting Austria-Hungary 
and Austria-Hungary liad sent to Servia an ulti- 
matum tlie like of which has never been deliv- 
ered since the Age of Napoleon. Sir Edward 
Grey, who is not accustomed to exaggerate, told 
Count Mensdorff that he had '^ never before 
seen one State address to another independent 
State a document of so formidable a character. ' ' 
That the real author of the ultimatum was the 
clement prince who ordered his soldiers to give 
no quarter to Chinamen is not improbable. 
Servia, moreover, had practically accepted the 
terms of the ultimatum. To murder, to beg- 
gar, and to burn the houses of neutrals is a 
natural action on the part of ^^the greatest 
civilised people known to history.'' 

(2) *^From the time of their first appear- 
ance in history, the Germans showed them- 
selves a firstclass civilised people" (p. 53). 

The Romans and Greeks who first came in 
contact with them would not have agreed with 
the General. The Goths and the Vandals were 
Germans. 

(3) ^*The proud conviction forces itself 
upon us with irresistible power that a high, 



GERMANY'S MADNESS 219 

if not the highest, importance for the en- 
tire development of the human race is as- 
cribable to this German people'' (p. 68). 

General Von Bernhardi is more modest than 
his master (see p. 163). 

(4) *^Two great movements were born 
from the German intellectual life, on which, 
henceforth, all the intellectual and moral 
progress of man must rest: the Reforma- 
tion and the critical philosophy" (p. 69). 

The italics are ours. General Von Bernhardi 
is trespassing on the Kaiser's province! The 
Chinese had the impertinence to invent gun- 
powder and printing. Gothic architecture came 
from France. The Renaissance commenced in 
Italy; Italians discovered America, a Pole, 
Copernicus, the heliocentric system ; and Shake- 
speare, Bacon, Newton and Watt had the mis- 
fortune to be Englishmen, Fulton to be an 
American. Wycliffe, too, was born before 
Luther, and Hus happened to be a Bohemian. 
The Emperor Sigismund who sent Hus to the 
stake was, however, a German. 

(5) **From the point of view of civilisa- 
tion, it is imperative to preserve the Ger- 



220 GERMANY'S MADNESS 

man spirit, and by so doing to establish foci 
of universal culture '^ (p. 75). 

Cannot ^*foci of universal culture'' be estab- 
lished without the assistance of Krupp and his 
agents? One would suppose that a Chinese 
Wall had been erected round Germany! That 
German culture is synonymous with ^^ universal 
culture" is a hard saying. Their printed al- 
phabet and their language, to take two exam- 
ples, are very clumsy vehicles for the transmis- 
sion of thought. It may surprise the soldat de 
plumCy as Napoleon would have called him, to 
learn that there have been scientists, artists, and 
men of letters, who were not, or are not Ger- 
mans. Faraday and Darwin were Englishmen, 
Pasteur and Balzac were Frenchmen, Metchni- 
koff is and Tolstoi was Russian, Chopin was a 
Pole, Edison is an American, Marconi is an 
Italian. The Germans have devoted them- 
selves to the study of Antiquity, but the most 
brilliant and penetrating study of the Ancient 
World has been written by an Italian, Ferrero, 
who, however, had the bad taste — long before 
Mr. Norman Angell — to expose the folly and 
wickedness of the German conception of War. 
Of course, no one denies that the world is 



GERMANY'S MADNESS 221 

heavily indebted to the race which has produced 
Leibnitz, Bach, Lessing, Kant, Niebnhr, 
Savigny, Goethe, Schiller, Beethoven, Gauss, 
Virchow, Wagner, Koch, and Ehrlich. 

(6) ^^No people is so little qualified as 
the German to direct its own destinies'' 
(p. 112). On this point General Von Bern- 
hardi enlarges. 

(a) Germany is *^a country . . . torn 
asunder internally and externally" 
(p. 128). 

( h ) The Germans ^ ^ have to-day become 
a peace-loving — an almost *too' peace- 
loving — nation" (p. 2). 

(c) The German character is ^^good- 
natured" (p. 2). 

(d) The Germans *^wish not to be dis- 
turbed in commercial life" (p. 2). 

It is strange that this, ^Hhe greatest civilised 
people known to history, " is ^ ^ so little qualified 
to direct its own destinies. " It is not so strange 
that the Germans '^wish not to be disturbed in 
commercial life." 

(7) ^'When the State renounces all ex- 
tension of power, and recoils from every 



222 GERMANY'S MADNESS 

war which is necessary for its expansion 
. . . then its citizens become stunted. . . . 
This is sufficiently exemplified by the pitia- 
ble existence of all small States'' (p. 19). 

And the City States of Athens and Florence 
produced a finer art and literature than the 
vast German and Roman Empires! 

Von Bernhardi, general and statesman, is 
more illuminating than Von Bernhardi, his- 
torian and sociologist. There is no need to 
comment on the following quotations. 

(1) ** Nothing is left but war to secure to 
the true elements of progress the ascend- 
ency over the spirits of corruption and de- 
cay" (p. 13). 

(2) War is ^^a moral obligation, and, as 
such, an indispensable factor in civilisa- 
tion" (p. 17). 

(3) *'From the Christian standpoint we 
arrive at the same conclusion" (p. 22). 

(4) ^^The efforts directed towards the 
abolition of war must not only be termed 
foolish, but absolutely immoral, and must 
be stigmatised as unworthy of the human 
race" (p. 27). 

(5) ** France must be so completely 



GERMANY'S MADNESS 223 

crushed that she can never again come 
across our path" (p. 104). 

(6) ''The principle of the balance of 
power in Europe . . . must be entirely dis- 
regarded" (p. 107). 

(7) ''A pacific agreement with England 
is, after all, a will-o '-the-wisp which no seri- 
ous German statesman would trouble to fol- 
low" (p. 97). 

(8) ' ' Our next war will be fought for the 
highest interests of our country and of 
mankind. This will invest it with impor- 
tance in the world 's history. ' World power 
or do^vnfall!' will be our rallying cry" 
(p. 156). 

IN CONCLUSION 

So long as the German nation was under the 
control of armed men like the Kaiser, his son, 
and General Von Bernhardi, a war between the 
German and the British Empires could scarcely 
have been prevented. 

Yv^hen estimating the chances of Germany and 
Austria-Hungary, the Omnisciences at Berlin 
seem to have left one or two important factors 
out of their calculations. The Russian Army 
has been through the furnace of the Russo- 



224 GERMANY'S MADNESS 

Japanese War; the Servians distingnislied 
themselves in the two Balkan Wars ; the French 
have had numerous opportunities of discover- 
ing, under war conditions, the nature of modern 
warfare, while the British Army was tested by 
the Boers. The German and Austro-Hungarian 
soldiers, on the other hand, are amateurs, very 
few of them having been in action. 

At the risk of seeming irrelevance, we shall 
close by quoting an appreciation of Lord Kitcli- 
ener made by a Prussian Staff Officer, Major 
Von Tiedmann, who, as military attache, ac- 
companied the British army in the Soudan cam- 
paign. ^'Lord Kitchener," he wrote, ^Svas 
familiar with the country and people of the 
Soudan and all facts concerned with it ; he spoke 
Arabic well, and it would have been difficult to 
find a more suitable person for the conduct of 
the campaign. . . . He waited unconcernedly 
for the right moment; but, when it came, he 
pounced with eagle-like swiftness and sureness 
upon his prey, and dealt the decisive blow in a 
surprisingly short time. He had neglected 
nothing. ' ' 

J. B. E. 



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